E Type 888330

[Mike]

Looks fantastic Jon!

[Nige]

Won't all that fancy black paint on the flywheel upset the balancing

[sladey]

Great stuff JP - thanks for sharing

[Nick Moss]

Great work there Johnathan, and some nice finishes

[neill]

Excellent job! Every little detail has been thought about.

[yoda]

What great progress - am super impressed with the work and attention to detail! Keep it up..

[jtparr]

The IRS was an assembly I had been both looking forward to and slightly nervous of...mainly as I would have to get to grips with the concept of end float and pre load...thankfully with the aid of You Tube I found a really useful link that explained how to set up the bearings in the aluminium Hub carrier without the need for specialist Jaguar tools




First matter of business was getting the rear differential refurbished.....having removed it from the IRS cage months ago and inspected the internals, all appeared well...so I set about cleaning and painting the case....



I made a note of the number of shims either side....cleaned up the original BEES bolts and re-blacked them....



but as I assumed the oil seals would be dry and ultimately leak....off it went to Alan Slawson at AJS ..which turned out to be fortuitous as one of the clutch plates was snapped and another excessively worn with score marks.....however Alan did say it looked like a low mileage unit...which had sat for some time unused....all of which bears out my car as a 32,000 mile example...





Alan also swopped the oil breather pipe for a later version which has a taller spout...reduces the chance for oil to be spat out of the case

Attention then turned to the rear brakes....I had already decided to upgrade the braking system...but the question was with what....

Based more on looks than anything else I elected to go with Zeus callipers...both front and rear....their aluminium callipers with vented brakes up front are pretty sympathetic to the original look of the car, and their stainless steel rear callipers are beautifully elegant







The original callipers cleaned up well, but I wasn’t happy to leave them as such, poor quality casting marks had to be removed and I also couldn’t resist putting a clean radius on the ends of the mounting lugs









Interesting casting marks...no idea what they signify......early car characteristics perhaps...?






So the first order of assembly was the inner fulcrum mounting brackets...which were not easy to fathom...no matter what I did I could always get a degree of shimming to align the mounting holes in the brackets from side to side...but as there are no shims between the top of the differential case and the underside of the pressed steel cage, I could never get an easy fit of the shafts...in the end I elected to leave the 4 top mounting bolts on top of the differential case slightly loose....and once the fulcrum were slid into place I torqued the top bolts and completed the lock wire









Fitting the brake callipers and the discs was almost straightforward, except the female thread in one fixing of the differential had somehow stripped....so an Ezilok insert was duly ordered and installed...



to allow these lovely beauties to follow....



Next up we’re new dampers placed into the original springs that were blast cleaned and spray painted





I have used new Kong dampers, which come in black, but I couldn’t leave them in that incorrect colour, so an over painting of BS381C-633 was required


I searched for a close match of silver paint to spray the callipers...this is a lovely soft silver and is a great match to clean CAD plating ...old bolts had all been saved and nickel plated ready for re-use




the transformation of the handbrake assemblies was also a rewarding success, stripping the parts down to their various elements










New UJ’s were fitted to the driveshafts, which together with the wishbones had been blast cleaned and then 2 pack spray painted by me...the OCD in me extended to aligning the circlips on axis of the shafts and ensuring the spring clips were orientated the same in all joints.....








Radius arms had also been blasted and 2 pack sprayed, but needed new bushes....these, despite being official genuine Jaguar bushes were not an easy fit....just too big to even get to start to fit in the arms....so I improvised with my drill, a long bolt, some washers and a file to shave a few thou from each to make installation possible







The needle roller bearings in the wishbones were in lovely condition so they were retained...I really want to save as much of the car as possible, and where items are to be replaced I have tried to source original old stock....so I was delighted to find a set of outer hub bearings that were not only Timken....but also marked MADE IN ENGLAND





The outer hub bearings along with the lower outer fulcrum bearings were the only ones I needed to replace, and in all cases, by using a combination of an overnight stretch in the freezer and generous use of a hot air gun all bearings simply dropped into place without the need for any use of force.....an absolute delight....



The aluminium hub carriers were cleaned by hand and then sprayed with a 2 pack Matt clear lacquer, prior to re-assembly





Tools for assembly were simple and only needed a block of Perspex to hold the splined wishbone within the aluminium hub carriers







Setting the end float of the hubs was straightforward, though I elected to do the entire process twice to double check my measurements....as I felt (worried) there was too much Play when all assembled into the cage....so out the hubs came and measurements were verified

End float for the lower outer fulcrum was 2 thou and for the main hubs was 3 thou


To achieve that 3 thou I improvised and ground the spacers to a precise figure using emery paper and a Vernier gauge



The penultimate item for assembly was to check the spacer shims on the drive shafts, so I had aluminium setting links CNC cut from my own CAD drawing at work, the first versions made of 6mm acrylic had failed, but these of 4mm were successful...at the mid lander position I had measurements of 0.9 and 1.0 degrees so on the upper end of tolerance figures









I will measure the camber once the car is on its wheels, but this is at least a positive start to assembly










Final item was to make the brake pipes, for which I purchased a pre made set from Automec, which helps me as the car is being transferred from LHD to RHD
I also purchased a roll of 3/16 copper pipe as I wanted to have spare pipes if needed (they were) but also so I could make my own remote easy bleed points

Fabrication is straightforward but did see me needing to make a few prototypes before final success was achieved


Lovely if I say so myself

Happy Christmas all….January should see the start on bodywork….so more soon

Jonathan

[KS]

Great to see! Fascinating for me as much of my early journalistic career was spent writing about rods with a 'Jag back end' – wrote a few features about how to install them in a rod, too. The debate of the day was whether to rubber mount the diff in the chassis (and retain radius rods) or solid mount it (no radius rods). I don't think I've seen in detail before what a stock Jaguar IRS set-up is like, so all very educational. Thanks - and merry Christmas!

[911hillclimber]

Wow!
That lot has bought some hot rod memories back! I used 2 x S Type IRS on my 2 hot rods, both didn't use the pressed steel cages, one was solid mounted and the other rubber custom mounted.

I always thought the design of the Jaguar units a bit odd. They use high precision needle rollers, taper brgs and such like, all shimmed to give toe angle and camber settings and then stick the whole lot on several rubber bushes to mount it all in the shell allowing the lot to wobble around!
The design is a wonderful ride mind.
Great write-up and pictures.
Note to KS: Remember Paul Haigh's Ford chassis? I think I had #1 under my 30 Tudor. That had a metalastic rubber diff mount.

[KS]

In addition to the excellent work on the IRS, I'm pleased to see the rest of the car is coming along well...

[sladey]

Nice work JP - thanks for sharing - impressive stuff

[inaglasshouse]

Proper job.
Well played Jonathan, thanks for posting.

[jtparr]

So when you have years of experience in coach building, but zero time on an E Type, what do you do first .......

Build a jig.....

But what jig.......?

Chuck Hadley who runs Monocoque Metalworks in the US plus both Hutsons and Martin Robey here in the UK have heavy duty rotisserie’s similar in scale to the Cellette jig that Barry has, but for a one off jig this was too expensive and unrealistic

An E Type has fewer “hard” suspension reference points than a 911 so plenty of adjustment and we also knew that the front engine frames fitted well and that the original bonnet also fitted with even gaps all round

In the early versions of the workshop manuals there is a dimensioned drawing of the shell with key reference points, so we could check the set out of the rear chassis legs

The jig was to serve to test the straightness of the shell, but also to enable the car to be rotated firstly for Barry to be able to weld the underside and secondly for me to be able to paint the underside and inside of the shell

so the first operation was to make some of the classic barry repairs and then replace the front bulkhead X panels and make sure the engine frame mounts were all aligned...


















So a plan formed to make a rigid central ladder frame with 2 removable vertical legs to locate onto the rear suspension cage mounts and a bolt on front cross frame which would locate into all the engine frame brackets














We also needed to use the frames of the jig to mount various ad hoc mini jigs to locate crucial reference points for positioning the end faces and edges of cills, pick up points of rear suspension trailing arms and to pick up the 6 mounting brackets of the side engine frames









What was not entirely unexpected was a certain degree of twist in the shell....a previous frontal impact was already known about....but with all the doors, bonnet and rear hatch closing neatly, there was no obvious signs of damage....






But with the jig having been made on the Cellette, so perfectly flat and straight, once the shell was offered onto it, the twist was evident....not much ..just 5/6mm ...








Initial attempts to pull and stretch were futile as the shell was impressively stiff....so much so that the cills were only able to both be levelled when both cills were completely cut through








Once the cills were cut and re-welded the front bulkhead levelled out perfectly, and sighting through from the rear bulkhead through to the dash all was perfectly aligned



So we had a decent degree of confidence in the shell, and with a few careful drop test measurements once it was on the jig the good news was only 2mm difference (comparing left to right side) front to back and just 3mm out diagonally....which for a hand built 1960’s car is pretty good...(and incidentally no worse than a 1970’s 911.......)














The entire jig was to be spaced 50mm clear of the under floor longitudinal chassis rails so Barry would have enough working room to remove and repair the floor and transmission Tunnel sections, and also not interfere with the boot floor which requires repair work














In hindsight this ability to be able to easily rotate the shell has paid dividends in helping Barry to undertake his work, less time is spent getting to the underside of the car, and it will definitely help me when it comes to painting...


so with the integrity of the shell in hand, proper work could begin.......which was to start with the central tunnel.....

thanks for looking
jonathan

[johnM]

Cracking update JP.

It will be great to see the shell come back to life again.

[sladey]

Excellent stuff! It looks particularly attractive in that rear three quarters view - seems a shame to put bumpers onto that