In reply to Sine_Qua_Non:
Excellent! Thanks!
While I have some experience on SUs from my Volvo Amazons, I am a bit rusty, and these HD carbs are a little different than the HS on the Volvos. I never consider myself smart enough to stop learning.
BTW- your hot-link points back to this page. 
AngryCorvair wrote: I love this car more than I should.
The Jag instills feelings in people they wouldn't normally have. 
I think I forgot to post this, but I got a set of seat belts installed in the back seat, so the kiddies can ride along, eventually. It was very easy. I'd bought seat belts from Clark's Corvair before for my '64 Corvair convertible, and liked them, so I figured why not put them in the Jag? Clarks even offers them in a dark blue, that they describe as "close to black", which should look pretty good with the Jag's dark blue leather.
Did I mention easy? The Jaguar, being a '66, already had holes drilled and tapped for seat belts in the back. Simply remove the lower seat squab, and remove the nylon bolts they'd put in at the factory to seal the holes. Then, install the new belts from Clark's. Amazingly, the hardware supplied with the belts fit the pre-tapped Jaguar holes! 1/2-20 threads.
Then, reinstall the lower squab.
Last night, after tucking our daughter in to bed, I got a hankerin' to check the front end alignment on the 3.8S. It seemed to have this tendency to wander off-center, and pulled particularly hard to the left. I figured it might have some toe issue (cambers seemed even) which might be easy to cure. A tape measure across the treads of the front tires confirmed a slight toe-out condition, so I jacked up the front end to have a go at adjusting the center link to dial in a bit of toe-in (1/8" is spec).
While playing with the center link, I happened to inspect the suspension bushings adjacent- and noticed the left lower rear A-arm bushing was....well, it wasn't. There. Gone. Poof! Vanished!
Once again, the bin of Volvo 122 parts yielded a bushing that was damn close in size, and with a little modification banged in. Some bushing has got to be better than no bushing, yes? The rest of the bushings were at least "present", so this should at least get the car to where it'll hold an alignment.
And then I took a shower (so as to not smell like the underside of a 51 year old Jaguar to my wife), and went to bed about 11:30.
Just took it out for a nighttime cruise. The alignment is now definitely wrong. Front tires squealing like crazy over 30 mph. Got back and measured- 1/2" toe-in. The outside tread was noticeably warmer than the inside. Also, these tires are rock-hard and predate Twitter, I believe.
Reset the toe to something reasonable, and decided on Father's Day, to motor down to the garage and fill it up with petrol.
This was the longest drive I'd ever made with the car, and as I got home I noticed the temperature climbing above 70C (where it usually sits) and approaching 90C as I pulled into the driveway. When I went to apply the brakes in the driveway, the pedal went to the floor- that had NEVER happened before! Fortunately, I was able to pump them up and get the Jag stopped.
Slowly and carefully, I eased the car into the garage, and noticed smoke coming from the left rear wheel.
To be continued...
With the rear end of the car in the air, I got underneath. Everything in the rear end seemed hot- the diff center, the brakes, the U-joints- and pretty sure I saw grease bubbling out of the driver's side U-joint. Potential reasons for all of these things include:
1) Missing U-joint heat shield (the exhaust runs near the U-joint)
2) Exhaust too close to the U-joint
3) Brakes sticking (Not sure that I ever got a satisfactory bleed out of the rear, inboard calipers)
4) This:
Remember how the car has different-sized rear tires? This is how different. Yow wow. 
One is a 205/65R15 and the other a 205/75R15. With the car in the air, I noticed that spinning one rear wheel caused the other to spin in the same direction, so possibly the car has positraction (which was an option). Motoring along with different-sized tires, the posi would be working...All. The. Time. This would make heat. This would also explain the weird handling issues.
So...bleed the brakes, get two new rear tires, fix the exhaust and heat shield on the U-joint...and try again?
Any other thoughts?
EDIT: As the car was sitting in the garage, I tried the brake pedal and it went to the floor, and at first would just keep going to the floor (no fluid was leaking anywhere). As the car sat there, and cooled off, I noticed I could pump the brakes up. And, after a while of sitting, and cooling, the brake pedal felt fine- no mushiness or sinking. Weird. The brake fluid level in the reservoir never changed.
Early British cars and Gerling brake fluid, what are you running in the Jag?
The rubber seals in the system might be reacting to the incorrect fluid.
In reply to jr02518:
"Compatible with all DOT 3 & DOT 4 fluids"
Also, the brake system seems to be Lockheed or Dunlop, unsure.
Here's a fun little discovery I made when setting the front toe. While laying under the car and messing with steering bits, I noticed that the steering box seemed not wholly connected to the front subframe.
See that top bolt? It wasn't threading into anything. I'm sure at some point it did, however when I put a wrench on it, it just spun and spun and...well, needless to say, it was stripped.
Here's the fun part, though: it threads into a captive nut, INSIDE OF the front suspension crossmember. I briefly entertained the notion of drilling through the other side of the crossmember and bolting through it with a longer bolt and nut, but decided the more correct approach would actually be easier, given a recent (within the last few months) tool purchase:
PLAZMA!!!!!
First, I freehand cut out a window in the bottom of the crossmember. That top nut (partially obscured by the reinforcement rib) is the one that's stripped out. You can actually see the lack of threads in there. I threaded a 1/2" longer bolt through the existing hole and nut, and tightened a new nut on over the existing nut. Then I tack welded it in place.
After allowing it to cool, and running the new bolt in and out a few times to verify it was OK, the chunk of crossmember that I'd plasma-cut out fit neatly back into the hole.
And welded back into place.
As drastic as this repair seemed at the time, in reality it took all of about 15 minutes to complete- and most of that time was spent scrounging for a grade 5 or 8 bolt that was the correct length.
With the right tools, you can fix anything.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse:
Nice job!
In reply to Pete Gossett:
Thanks. The welds on the right looked a little fugly, so I touched them up. They're under the car, its not like they're cosmetic or anything though.
Got two new rear tires- and new tubes- on the back. Both 205/70R15 Bled the brakes, fitted the exhaust further away from the calipers (some of the hanger brackets were bent/ broken) and am in the process of doing a full tune-up...
A quick calculation:
205/65R15 tire would make 790 Revolutions per mile
205/75R15 tire would make 744 Revolutions per mile
At 60 mph (the fastest I drove on the last drive) would a 46 RPM difference in tire rotational speed cause the limited slip to heat up significantly?
I've never been more excited to try out new tires.
Knock-off wheels are a new thing to me. This just looks so...weird.
But, they work. Got the two new rear tires on. Huzzah for 205/70R15 Cooper Trendsetters!
Since I had a pile of new parts from XJS Unlimited sitting on my workbench, I decided to install them prior to the next test drive. Points, plugs, condensor, wires, cap, rotor. Pulling the cap and rotor, though, led down a bit of a rabbit's hole...
Into the distributor I went...as it turns out, the springs on the mechanical advance were...wrong. There was slop in the mechanical advance mechanism such that it would advance itself basically at idle- meaning the idle timing setting was already taking some advance into account. Then, at higher RPMs, the amount of available advance was less. And base timing was only set to 5 or 6 deg. BTDC- spec for this engine is 9 or 10. Of course, the damper just had one mark on it- 0- so I had to measure the damper diameter, calculate circumference, and figure out where the marks for 10, 20, 30, etc would be and make them.
Also, one of the weights in the distributor was not attached. ??? This thing was all goobered up.
Fixed the weights. Fixed the springs. Buttoned it all back together with all the new parts, set the dwell, and set the timing so that "all in" around 2400 RPM the engine was pulling about 35 degrees of total time. This came back down to a base time of right about 10 degrees at idle- perfect.
The next test drive was MUCH better. Throttle response was crisp and acceleration was...impressive. It's amazing how much difference a well-set up ignition system can make.
volvoclearinghouse wrote: With the rear end of the car in the air, I got underneath. Everything in the rear end seemed hot- the diff center, the brakes, the U-joints- and pretty sure I saw grease bubbling out of the driver's side U-joint. Potential reasons for all of these things include: 1) Missing U-joint heat shield (the exhaust runs near the U-joint) 2) Exhaust too close to the U-joint 3) Brakes sticking (Not sure that I ever got a satisfactory bleed out of the rear, inboard calipers) 4) This:
It wasn't optional on the 3.8 sedan it was standard.. (limited slip differential) that means that you must use the supplement for positraction when changing differential fluid..
Rebuilding the rear brakes on sedans go a lot better/easier if the whole rear end assembly is replaced.. If the calipers are shot don't buy new, check out Wilwood brakes they have calipers that will bolt right on and are tons cheaper than Jaguar parts.. You will have to get clever with the parking brake though..
volvoclearinghouse wrote: Knock-off wheels are a new thing to me. This just looks so...weird.
OK, you missed something important. See that screw in the middle of the distributor? unscrew it and drop a few drops of engine oil in before replacing it.. You can do it without removing the distributor, just pop off the distributor cap and rotor... also clean the oil off the splines on both the wire wheels and the hubs. Now using copper anti-seize recoat the hubs and splines on the wheels as well as the knock off threads.. You can coat the inner taper but not the friction surface.. on the outside of the wires or inside of the knock off..
In reply to frenchyd:
Thanks for the tip- the rotor button says "remove to oil" so I figured that was a lubrication point. I'll hit it tonight.
Ditto for the advice on knock-offs. Wasn't sure what the lubrication regimen was for those so I just removed and installed.
When I topped off the diff fluid, I did add some positraction additive. So that's covered.
OK, NAPA rocks.
Last night I was fiddling with the distributor, setting the dwell and timing, and around 10:30PM (and obviously tired) I must have not pushed the rotor all the way onto the distributor shaft. I went to crank the engine and "puff puff snort cough"- it was most unhappy. Removing the distributor cap revealed the problem- and now the little key molded into the rotor was sheared off.
I checked on Rock Auto...Advance...Auto Zone...no one could get me a rotor before next week. Finally I called my local NAPA store.
"Hello, I need a distributor rotor for a 1966 Jaguar."
"Well, that's one I don't get too often. Let me check...Yup, we can have it for ya by noon."
"Awesome, thanks!"
Great work continuing here.
The more experienced I get as a shade tree mechanic (I'm 43), the more I go to NAPA auto parts. The other chains quality just isn't as good as NAPA. Oh sure, the others will give you "life time replacement warranty" but I HATE doing the job over and over to replace their inferior quality parts. My time is becoming more valuable.
by the way, I'm super jealous of this AWESOME ride. Enjoy.
In reply to Indy-Guy:
I'm turning 40 in a week or so. I sometimes think, man, if I had the last decade's worth of knowledge when I was 30...
NAPA is good. Some of their parts quality isn't as good as it used to be- I suspect the influx of cheap imported goods has affected even their supply chain- but they stand behind everything and generally hire the sort of counter personnel you'd expect to see in an auto parts store. Not some lip-pierced kid named Colton who dreams of someday adding fender vent porthole stickers to his Cobalt.
volvoclearinghouse wrote: OK, NAPA rocks. Last night I was fiddling with the distributor, setting the dwell and timing, and around 10:30PM (and obviously tired) I must have not pushed the rotor all the way onto the distributor shaft. I went to crank the engine and "puff puff snort cough"- it was most unhappy. Removing the distributor cap revealed the problem- and now the little key molded into the rotor was sheared off. I checked on Rock Auto...Advance...Auto Zone...no one could get me a rotor before next week. Finally I called my local NAPA store. "Hello, I need a distributor rotor for a 1966 Jaguar." "Well, that's one I don't get too often. Let me check...Yup, we can have it for ya by noon." "Awesome, thanks!"
If that's the actual rotor you got, it's crap. Those things have been bedeviling British car owners for years. It may work OK for awhile, but get a red one from Advanced Distributors or.Kip Motors in the meantime.
In reply to Basil Exposition:
How in the devil can Lucas screw up something as simple as a distributor rotor??? What about it makes it crap?
Link to what I ought to be using?
The rivet holding the rotor arm onto the bakelite base causes the bakelite to crack allowing the contact to short through the crack to the distributor shaft. The "red" ones (or blue as I've seen on 25D4 rotors) lack the rivet and are made of a higher grade of plastic, meaning they rarely fail the same way the rivetted rotors do.
Red Rotor, Red Rotor! Paging Red Rotor.
Red Rotor ordered. Thanks, guys!
The brake behavior you describe is a bad master cylinder, eventually it will quit pumping up. In a 66 you probably do not have dual circuit brakes either, bad master=no hydraulic brakes at all. Make sure the handbrake works properly, that's all the redundancy you get in a single circuit car.
In reply to BrokenYugo:
I suspected that, too, but I've never had a master cylinder go bad and then suddenly "get better". The problem seemed to be when the engine was warm, then suddenly there was no brakes. After it cooled off, the brakes worked as they had before- normally. No leaks were noticed anywhere, and the rear end was noticeably hot. Weird.
The usual "failure mode" I've had with a master cylinder is, when the brake is applied and the car is stopped, the brake pedal slowly goes to the floor as pressure is applied to the pedal. This was, stomp on the brake- no resistance at all when the car was warm, and then when it cooled down, stop on the pedal- and it holds.
You'll need to log in to post.
