PHASE 1 – assessment and early treatment.

The problem – one underpowered XJ40 that weighs the same as a small house.

The solution – Kutuka’s Fat Camp.

The Jefferys Lister XJ40 is a bit of a conundrum. Easily the shiniest and most-polished car on the grid, the paint is always kept to a high standard, but the car itself is frequently a mechanical nightmare. It is easily the heaviest car on the grid, despite having easily the smallest, lightest pilot. It is about the least modified car, in the most-modifiable class.

Whilst it is in some ways a rare beast, as Lister didn’t breathe on many of these at all, over the years it has lost a lot of Lister, such that really these days only the exhaust is still there. Large sums of money have been spent on it, upgrades here and there, but mostly just keeping it roadworthy, who can forget MalloryPark with the car on only three wheels under braking, but the psychotic boy pilot still trying to overtake into the essess?

The driver has the reaction times of a housefly, and there is little wrong with his ability to catch a slide, but the car, despite being in the most permissive modified class of all, is a pretty solid back end of the grid machine.

In some ways this car also demonstrates a few of the oddities of the regulations. Stuck on 16” wheels when less modified classes may go to 17s, for example. For me, a modified class car should be all fibreglass and Perspex, big pieces missing, stripped back to a bodyshell with an engine and a saddle, a bespoke ECU and thunderous exhaust bellowing 320bhp at the scenery. What we have here is a car that can go to Sainsburys, albeit with the carpets missing.

There is clearly something amiss in the engine department too, it runs hot and coughs up its breakfast as soon as it stops moving. That’s not right at all. The engine was run for a period without any oil in it last year, which is unlikely to have assisted.

This project was therefore presented to the beavers of Kutuka North, with a helpfully blank set of instructions, essentially, please put an engine in it, and whatever else you think. We like that sort of deal. It’s still not going as far as we’d like, but it’s a good start.

We put it straight on the weigh scales. Then, when the tears had stopped, we had a good sit down and a cuppa until the pain stopped. 1745kg. Jesus.

OK, so, obviously, a diet is in order. That’s easy, this car can shed 50kg in the next hour, it’s that fat.

The engine deal, well, that needs some investigation. Essentially, it wants a new engine. But it would be nice to know what was wrong with the old. The old engine was a straight swap from a scrapper, but there have been tinkerings since then. Who knows what lies beneath?

Division of duties at KMN is simple, Bear is the engine department, I’ll take the rest.

The engine is whipped out in short order. Much of what comes out will not be going back in. We will be swapping all hoses, and the radiator, this thing is getting upgrades everywhere we can. An oil cooler is also going in, this car is not overheating ever again.

Engine out and off for autopsy, the carcass is now mine. Welding to the front inner wings is clearly needed. Difficult with all the car still here, undersealed, plastic wheelarch protectors fitted etc, it catches fire so easily, but with patience and panic it is rid of the tinworm. Not as neat as I’d like, but form over function for now.

In fact it saddens me a little that we’re not doing this as a full project, the engine bay on this car could sparkle, strip it right back, blast, weld, paint in that nice Antigua blue to match the outside, it could be quite nice in here. Maybe one day.

Whilst the engine is missing, out comes the paintbrush and the petrol and the engine bay degreased. Apparently this car was once white. Go figure. A slick of grease and muck accumulates on the giant sheet of cardboard I remembered to put down this time.

There are a few pieces in here we can do without. So wave goodbye, and delete. Not a lot in it, but it all counts.

Some of the wiring is suspect, but we are working on the assumption that if it works, leave it.

Most of the weight loss is internal. The door cards and armrests are removed, rear parcel shelf, centre console, tread plates, furflex trim, radio, clock, superfluous wiring etc all bite the dust. That’s a hefty weight saving immediately. There are 5kg of speakers alone.

In the boot and it’s going to rather depend on time and balance. There is weight here to lose, but I am wary of taking rear end weight out without front end to counter it, and there isn’t a great deal to shed quickly at the pointy end. We elect to leave it as it is, subject to a few tweaks.

In the interests of weight distribution, we will also move the fire extinguisher from driver to passenger side. It costs nothing, and takes little time.

Were this any other race car, it might get a bit of ally sheet thrown at it as a token to interior, but the brief is clear, a high standard to be maintained. OK. A coat of satin black paint smartens up the interior, which was showing its white bits again where I tore out the remaining carpet and sound deadening. The centre console is gone, but there are a few bits that need to be housed, so with the aid of my trusty empty cereal boxes a template is made for a new, upright housing to fill the hole and mount the switches.

A pile of carbon fibre-effect ABS plastic arrives, and we’re quickly converted to it as a material. Lightweight, glossy, easy to work with. I wish it were fireproof, but you can’t have everything. It’s certainly better than the interior materials that it had before. Careful use of the heat gun and shears forms the new console.

Thinner sheets are made into door cards, retaining some of the original trim and giving a rather nice carbon fibre and Jaguar wood combination, a strange but effective mixture of old and new. I actually like it, and my own car will follow suit as soon as possible.

The total diet comes in at around 90kg. It’s still not skinny, but if they stop brimming the fuel tank it can be qualifying at around 1600kg now, which puts it on a par with a class F XJS. That’s progress.

That said, it now needs as much power as a class F, and handling. Our brief doesn’t include the handling department. One suspects there are gains to make there.

The engine project is lengthy, and expensive. All new parts into a recon block – Bear had the bores honed and the outside cleaned, it’s as close to new as you get.

New crank, shells, mains, rods, rings and chains. New head and cams. Fortunately, Jaguar were having a bit of a sale, so it’s not that bad, it’s the same procedure I put Helen through two years ago. Don’t think about the cost, it’s only expensive if you think about it.

But, once done, it is effectively a complete re-con engine. Silicone hoses replace the extremely dodgy and very old, cracked rubber ones. An alloy radiator replaces the XJ40 unit, and a new oil cooler meets bespoke hoses. Everything is cleaned up, painted where it needs it, the attention to some of the details is a little bit pointless, but we like getting carried away.

Reinstalled and it fires straight up, which always catches us by surprise. An immediate 150 mile shakedown run gives the new rings something to think about, oil pressure is excellent, temperature bang in the middle of normal at 85mph, perfect. That’s what we call bang on.

It’s not finished, but the car is heading off to the rolling road and collected by the eager customer that same night, and exhaust leak and a hole between cockpit and road will make that a loud trip home…

Imagine the dismay we feel to get that call in the morning then, to report that the car has overheated and throwing out steam in traffic. The helpful delivery driver has sat in traffic without the electric fan on until it brewed up. Goodbye piston rings, you were well worth the £1 per mile that you cost.

The rolling road that it then gets sent to compounds the issue, and what is returned to us is a car that is sending out plumes of neat fuel from the exhausts, making no more power than it did before we started this project. What is the obsession rolling roads seem to have with just ramping up the fuel to the point of bore-wash? We are what you would call annoyed that a third party should scupper the project at the 11^th hour, but we’ll make the best of their bad job.

Other than reverse some of the steps that were taken, we have time now only to finish the job of the interior trim. The car looks completely different inside, it’s lighter, and it is now at least a reliable engine. It’s not got the go that its spec suggests, there’s no ruddy compression and it’s leaving smoke on overrun like a tramp steamer, but it’s running perfectly cool, even under hard abuse, and the oil pressure is very good. It at least won’t fail or misbehave now, young Matthew has something he can now use without fear of mechanical failure, something this car has not had in a good long time.

The autopsy on the old engine shows a few rather wild and interesting problems. The head gasket with half the waterways blocked with silicone sealant points towards a potential cause of the overheating – and presumably itself caused by a dodgy water pump replacement.

The bearings are deeply scored, not just worn, but properly scoured. You don’t get a cheap version of a dry sump merely by removing the oil, it does need some in.

No use crying about the dead engine mind, this car is ready to roll, and Donington awaits.

STAGE 2 - TESTING. Coming soon.