After more than 10 years, the E-Type is back in my possession. Charlie, of Classic Car Couriers, brought it up on his flatbed. The alley leading away from Britsport is even worse than the photo shows. Took about five years off my life watching the truck fall into every pothole on the way out!

That said, we made it, and the car looks fantastic. It has not been color-sanded yet, so there is still a bit of orange peel and dust motes, but Mark did sand and polish the top of the scuttle so I can install the wipers and other bulkhead gubbons.

I’ve put the original dataplate back in…you can see it was very casually placed when it was new. I suspect it was either Friday afternoon after a liquid lunch–or Monday a morning after a hard weekend–for the plate guy.

The MGB is now living with the truck on the other side of the shop. The bikes will be moving over there as well, but I need to do some organizing. As usual.

Mark Jones of Britsport just sent me a few photos of what happened in the paint booth today. Car will sit for a couple of weeks in the booth, and then it shows up here for the big mechanical pieces to go in, and then back for color sanding and polishing before exterior trim and interior.

Of course, I have none of those mechanical bits ready to go in yet. I need a windfall–and my mother was just mentioning the accidental death insurance she carries…hmm. I like her, though; I should probably stick to trying to raise money honestly. Anyone for a mortgage derivative?

Progress is glacial, but it does eventually happen. (Of course, glaciers are in retreat all over the world so perhaps that’s a more apt analogy than I want!)

The E-Type is about to be painted! It’s in the booth and is having a final wet-sand before being sprayed next week.

I have to say this car has some of the nicest bodywork I’ve seen on an E-Type. Mark and company spent a lot of time and effort getting the gaps just so. The fit and finish is superior to the factory–not too hard on these early cars!

One non-original thing: we will be color painting the car with the engine frames in place. Early cars like this were likely painted first and then assembled, but it would be madness at this point to disturb the careful bonnet alignment.

Doors, cockpit, and bootlid have already had color applied to the “hidden” sides.

Mark had an opalescent silver grey car in the shop whose color I liked, so we used that color for this car.

Hardtop will be painted to match the body; I suppose on an early car it should be black but this car predates the hardtop in any case, and the cars look really sleek with the top painted to match.

Be very exciting to have the car back here. Too bad the restoration fund needs replenishing!

Mark Jones of Britsport of Seattle is almost ready to paint the E-Type and sent me these photos today. I’m going to drop by the shop to peek at it on Friday. Very exciting. I guess I should get the rest of my parts out of storage!

It would be good to have the lift installed before this arrives, I think!

John at Autosport Seattle hosted a “tech session” for the local Jaguar club today, featuring the tear-down and examination of an XK engine. The engine chosen was the one from the infamous Rusty Heaps “imaginary car.” So this counts as, gasp, some progress on the E-Type restoration!

The night before the “show,” John removed the studs from the block and undid the cam sprocket bolts in order to expedite the demo. (I’m embarrassed at how filthy the mill is…your machinist really likes it when you get rid of the heavy grime before bringing them your engine, but I was in a rush when I brought this down…many years ago, now.)

Removing the studs makes taking the head off a doddle. (If you don’t remove them, you can be there for weeks trying to get the bloody thing off!) This engine’s head still had its original shimmed gasket, and there was no sign it had ever been off the engine before.

Removing the sump didn’t reveal any horrors. The oil pump has been changed, though, and the rear seal only had one hex bolt holding it on, while the other fastener was pretty buggered–someone was bodging a bit at some point.

Not sure how far the car drove on the new oil pump, but neither bolt securing the oil-feed pipe was tightened. That’s not good, generally speaking.

When we removed the main caps, all bearings were found to be in OK condition, with one exception, and even that wasn’t too horrible. All of the journals were worn about .001″.

John does a quick examination of the cylinder bores. None had any discernible wear…if this was going to be a budget-job John thought a hone of the cylinder liners and a re-use of the original pistons would be fine. Because we don’t want to cut corners, we’ll bore out to the next over-size piston (.010 or.020) and use new pistons.

The pistons were in good condition, with no broken rings. (They will be replaced, to match the new bore.)

The aftermath of the tech session. Autosport has rebuilt hundreds–possibly thousands–of XK engines, so this hodge-podge is perfectly decipherable to them (and when not pulling things apart quickly for a restive audience, the aftermath is much neater). I advise home-restorers to use more care in keeping track of the parts!

More “wreckage.” The timing gear didn’t want to come off the nose of the crank, so to move things along, John removed a pin from the chain and “broke” it. (The chain will be replaced anyway, of course.) The block was free of cracks or other damage, which is a relief.

I’ll admit to another “raise the eyebrows of the machinist” moment: I neglected to drain the coolant from the block, so when John tipped it over to take the sump off about a million gallons of coolant came pouring out. Oops.

The head will be further disassembled, of course, and the crank looks good.

Nothing to see here except the sump and the timing cover.

In all, I’m very pleased with the condition of the motor. It really couldn’t be better. The ring-gear was missing a couple of teeth, one main bearing was visibly worn, and the rest looks very good. We’ll be going with late fuel-injection valves, stake-down kits, a 4.2-type oil pump and new bits where warranted or needed. But looking good so far! Something on the car had to be better than expected, eh?

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.