1973 V12 E Type (GT) Mechanical rebuild/upgrade  Photo Archive

The engine is now complete! I hope you agree with me that the finished result has been worth the wait. Look for photographs of the installation over the next couple of days.

Some excellent progress on the engine this week. Having got the remachined heads back last week, with all new valve seats and some weld repair work having been done to some corrosion damage on the deck surface, John set about assembling them and setting up the valve clearances. This time, I am pleased to report, the process went smoothly and without incident.

Both heads were finished up today and installed to the engine block for the last time. The photographs below show John and Eric in the engine clean room installing the final head. It doesn't matter how many V12 engines I see being rebuilt, I never cease to be amazed by the sheer size and magnificence of the things. A newly rebuilt Jaguar V12 engine 'sans heads' remains one of the most photogenic of all Jaguar components!

We also received back the flywheel, clutch and harmonic balancer - all of which we had zero balanced - so we are rapidly running out of excuses for not installing the engine and gearbox back in the car! Look for another significant update later this week.

The following photographs show the problems that we discovered with the cylinder heads. I am sorry to have to report that the previous specialist shop made a serious error when they installed the new valve seats. In simple terms, they installed them too deeply into the cylinder head.

The problem is that once the valves are installed, there must be clearance (around 320 thousandths of an inch, plus whatever the valve lash should be) between the top of the valve stem and the bottom of the camshaft lobe. In this case, because the seats were incorrectly installed, there was actually no clearance whatsoever.

The only solution, as per our telephone conversation yesterday, is to cut out all 24 valve seats and correctly install new seats.

As a matter of interest, our predecessors did not lap in any of the valves either. Bearing in mind that when you had these heads delivered to us they were fully assembled, one assumes that they were considered ready for installation. Had this engine run at all, it would have done so with disastrous consequences. The good news is that John and his team spotted the errors, and disaster has been averted. The heads have already been completely torn down and will be collected by my machinist on Monday morning.

Our plan is to press on and finish the assembly of the block, and install that and the new Getrag 5 speed into the car on Tuesday. We will then finish up everything we possibly can prior to receiving the cylinder heads back from the machinist. My apologies for the delays that this is obviously causing, but I know you will appreciate that it is far better that we caught this now!

Hopefully the photographs below will help explain our findings. The last image shows what half an hour on the buffing wheel can do to clean up your engine bay! The enlarged images also include a little more written explanation for you.

The following photographs show the rear suspension after we completely disassembled it. We suspect that this is the first time it has been torn down since the car was new, and it was surprising to see the British Leyland 'assembly line label' still intact.

Greg: As you can see in some of the photographs in yesterday's report, the power steering lines were really in pretty bad shape. We have taken the opportunity to replace those, and have also rebuilt the power steering pump itself (see above).

For the extra hour it took, we also cleaned it up for you and painted it.

We have been making some excellent progress this week!
 

Here you can see the front suspension being rebuilt and installed back to the car - as well as Eric fitting the new Wilwood calipers.

Notice how we have substituted the later style sealed lower balljoints during the rebuilding process. This is an upgrade we recommend with all E Types. The sealed units are stronger and far more durable than the original multi-piece item.

Once the suspension is fully rebuilt, we will be installing the rebuilt engine and Getrag gearbox - shouldn't be long now, Greg!
 
 


 

Report date - July 8th, 1999

This vehicle is currently undergoing a full engine rebuild, suspension upgrade, brake upgrade and 5 speed conversion in our workshops. The following pictures show the engine starting to go back together following completion of all the machine work and balancing.
 
 

Click on thumbnails to view larger images.