Article 1

Restoration Article 1

This is the first article in what hopefully will be a series regarding my efforts to restore a 1967 Jaguar E-Type. Books, magazine
articles, web sites, and TV shows abound these days regarding the hobby and/or business of car restoration. I don't think I can
improve on the excellent job that some of these sites do in illuminating the finer points of old car restoration. What I hope to do
is to add some of my own "color commentary" as they say in the broadcasting business and to of course point out any
particular idiosyncrasies that the E-Type has that may be of some benefit to our club members. Additionally, I have been a
member of the Carolina Jaguar Club for several years and have yet to participate in a single event. This is my way of starting to
participate in the club.

The car that we will be following is a 1967 E-type which I acquired several years ago. To back track a little (quite a bit actually) I
was the typical teenager, smitten with cars of all sorts. My first project was a 1957 Chevrolet 4 door sedan. I believe I paid
$150 for it. For that price, I'm not convinced that it came with piston rings because it burned about 1 quart of oil every 25 miles!
So my first job was to pull the engine and tear it down for a rebuild. Fortunately, my father knew his way around cars and our
next door neighbor worked at an auto parts store. So I was able to rebuild the engine, which also helped build my confidence.

The excitement of having my own car began to wear off and I realized that an American sedan with a 6 cylinder engine and an
automatic transmission wasn't a real rocket ship. At some point in my junior year in high school a friend of mine spotted a
Porsche roadster sitting under a tarp in a backyard in the neighborhood. He approached the owner about buying it and was
told he would let it go for $400. I think that was about $350 more than my friend had but since I had an after school job, I was
able to scrape up the cash and bought the car. The Porsche had a good engine, as the previous owner had had the engine
rebuilt a short time before he quit driving it. But it came blessed with the curse that I thought only the British had perfected:
pervasive rust. But in my eyes it was a stray dog needing a good home and I went to work with sheet aluminum, roofing tar, and
pop rivets and patched up most of the major openings. I then proceeded to apply copious amounts of body filler (bondo) to the
exterior and did the prep work for a paint job. A local paint and body shop took pity on me and put a coat of bright red enamel
paint on it. I then cut out carpeting for the interior and even sewed up some seat covers. With this car finally roadworthy, I
proceeded to take it out and thrash it along the twisty roads of central Virginia. Its amazing I didn't wrap it around a tree but it
survived to be sold to an unsuspecting man in Atlanta when I needed cash to continue at college more than I needed a sports
car.

After I left my parents house (and my dad's garage) for college I
never really had a suitable place to work on cars in any significant
sense. Then came marriage to a wonderful girl and we were
quickly blessed with a son and, surprise, twin daughters. My car
fiddling days were well and truly over.

Now we get to fast forward 15 years. My three teenagers each
have a Volvo 240 to drive, just like the Car Talk guys recommend.
And I of course am laboring mightily just to keep them running when
the twins spot a 30 year old Volvo on the cover of a parts catalog
and exclaim How Cool Is That! Well, the old urge is still there and
for Christmas in their junior year in high school I present them with
a 1965 Volvo PV544.

It's rough and is rolled in on a trailer on Christmas morning but
they love the look of the old thing and I'm thinking
Father/Daughter Bonding Project. As with the Porsche, it
desperately needs body work but I now have a garage in the
basement of my new house and we get to work. The Volvo is
kind of nice because you can unbolt most of the major body
panels and work on them one at a time, so we spend many hours
adding metal repair panels, body filler, and sanding. This time I
paint the car myself, which is a skill that I will discuss in future
articles. We get the car into a presentable form and the twins are
the talk of their school as they begin their daily commute in the
old Volvo. The twins name it "Guido" because they think it looks
like a Mafia staff car.

Being an engineer, I keep track of all my expenses and am
dismayed to find that I have already invested over $5000 in a car
that I probably couldn't sell on its best day for more than $2500.
This is a recurring theme of the car restoration hobby!

Now that I had made my acquisition, I began to bone up on the
E-Type in general and my car in particular. I have to admit that
my employer at the time probably didn't get a full days work out
of me because I was secretly surfing the internet all day at work
Googling Jag websites. I learned that I had a transition car
known as a Series 1 1/2. There still rage many a battle in the
Jaguar Forums about what a Series 1 1/2 really means. My car
has toggle switches on the dash and triple SU's but was lacking
covered headlights, which pretty much defines Series 1 1/2. I
also found that some consider the 2+2 to be rather the ugly
duckling of the breed. All I had to do was get those brakes
working and I would be cruising down the highway.

Did I mention that the clutch was frozen too? Apparently, if you
don't exercise your Jag often enough, it will reward you by fusing
the clutch disc to the flywheel and/or the pressure plate. One
cure for this is to jack one of the rear wheels off the ground, start
the engine in gear, warm everything up really well, and then
stand on the brakes. Most folks report that the heat and the
torque of the engine against the brakes will pop the clutch disk
loose. But my brakes didn't work so I needed to come up with
another method. Next month we'll tackle these problems!

I ponder this state of affairs and while I am musing, an ad appears in the Raleigh paper for a 1967 Jaguar E-Type. Boy, I
sure remember those cars from when I was a teenager but they still must be incredibly expensive. No, the fellow selling this
one only wants $7000! Now that sounds like it's in my price range so I head out to see the car. Man, I turn into the driveway
and I am smitten! I made a perfunctory inspection and the owner tells me that the brakes don't work so we can't do much
more than start it up. Well, that set the hook. The sound of that engine just put me over the edge. I pretty much offered to
pay him his price on the spot and several days later a rollback delivered it to my driveway.