Visited Mark at Britsport today, and got a chance to see my E-Type again. Not much has changed (we’re waiting to paint it until I have a shop to reassemble the car), but by coincidence, a later car painted the same color that mine was (and will be again) was parked next to it, and I grabbed a snap.

Not a lot going on in the Rusty Heaps world at the moment. After six years (!) I’m finally going to get my chrome back for the E-Type. The best evidence that there may be such a thing as Karma is that whenever I hand over parts or assemblies to be worked on by someone else, my own chronic tardiness is revisited tenfold.

XKE Data and XK Data have been joined by Saloon Data (for classic Jaguar sedans) and XJ-S Data (for fans of the Jaguar coupe). I’m also working on three other flavors of the data sites for non-Jaguar cars. It’s a bit of work, but folks seem to enjoy the sites so that’s worth it in the end.

(The photo shows my car on the day it was delivered.)

This is the only “completely restored” part of my E-Type, the carburetors. I really enjoy this kind of work…sad to think it’s now been three or more years since I completed them! One day I’ll be working on that car again…almost ten years after I purchased it. Pretty pathetic. You can see the rebuild of these carbs in progress over at XKE Data.

My E-Type project is stalled, but it’s been a hectic few years and I’m not done with the hectic part yet. However, I’ve not given up, I’m just taking a breather.

Status: The body is just about ready for paint. A lot of pieces have been accumulated, but still more are needed. The mechanical components are still at the machine shop, waiting for the go-ahead. Mostly, I need space to work on it, and hopefully within a year or so I’ll have my “dream shop,” or something close to it, ready to go.

I always used to scoff at people who couldn’t seem to get their projects done. It turns out I’m one of them!

My 1961 XKE roadster is my forever car…in that the car is going to take forever to finish. When I started I was full of vim, and sure I could get it done in a year.

Now, I’m a broken old man who just hopes he’s able to turn a wrench under his own power by the time I can take it up again.

Before acquiring this machine, I owned a beautiful 1966 Fixed Head Coupe, which was “done” and hence I needed to get something infinitely worse, right? See if you can see the flaw in this logic:

• I only use my car on sunny days; therefore
• I should have a convertible!

That’s all just dandy, until you realize that XKE convertibles are more than twice as dear as their coupe siblings. So the amount I would net for my coupe would only stretch to a “project” XKE.

Oh, I had high hopes–I would buy a “weekend project,” a car which could be made into a scruffy driver quickly, and which I could drive for years before redoing it. Bzzzzt! I bought the car sight-unseen from the other side of the country, and when it rolled off the truck, I knew I was sunk.

“The Imaginary Car” is what my wife calls it. She’s never seen more than a few parts in any one place.