Econo Jag MK2 1967 2.4 Auto

[homersimpson]

I had a good day on the car yesterday, kids were all tired from us coming back from holiday so spent the day inside watching DVD's and playing with their toys and I sneaked out at lunchtime to do a bit on Econojag.

As it was a glorious day from a weather perspective it seemed the ideal opportunity to do the tracking, castor and camber which I really need to do outside as my garage isn't big enough to do it inside.

The first thing I did was to set the castor to be as much as possible by moving all the shims on the top balljoint to the front, this apparently makes them drive better at speed but you can't get more than about 2 degrees of castor, if you want more the only option is to shim the top arm mount where it connects to the subframe at the rear only which I didn't want to do at this stage, you can just see the shims in front of the ball joint in the picture below and also my camber gauge for the next stage.

Having made sure the front of the car was level (hence the wood and spanner spacers in the picture above) I then proceeded to set the camber, it measured 0.5 degrees positive both sides which is the original specification for the car which was good and I made up new shims to put behind the top arm top mount totalling 6mm per side which made the camber 1 degree negative.

Next I set the tracking (sorry no pictures) by using two straight lengths clamped to the disks and then setting them so they were parallel before measuring where the edge of the wheel would be and toeing in 1/8 " to match the car specification and it was hopefully job done on the front alignment.

Next I took the rear wheels off and had all four balanced at my local tyre place for £6.50 each which I thought was good value.

[pollystag]

[/quote]

That looks really nice and the wheels are nice.

What colour is it and is it a Jaguar/Daimler colour?

[/quote]

Well, I thought it was the same as yours opalecent silver blue but i just took the what i thought was the original colour fuel cap to my local paint place and they matched it, so must be a different colour.

[homersimpson]

Apr 5, 2023 19:58:53 GMT pollystag said:

That looks really nice and the wheels are nice.

What colour is it and is it a Jaguar/Daimler colour?

[/quote]

Well, I thought it was the same as yours opalecent silver blue but i just took the what i thought was the original colour fuel cap to my local paint place and they matched it, so must be a different colour.

[/quote][/div]

The picture made it look a bit darker to me but looking again I can see its in the shade a bit which is probably why, its a great colour although I have to give my wife the credit as she chose it (car was originally gold).

As an aside when I ordered the paint I did it over the phone and said I wanted opalescent blue, fortunatly I realised the error when speaking to the paint supplier and they looked it up and said there is an opalescent blue and and an opalescent silver blue and I had asked for the wrong one!  Good job as if it had of been mixed wrong I would have had to use it as there is no way my wife would let me buy another load of paint.

[homersimpson]

I've been working on the heater wiring, i've fitted a couple of relays so that the load on the existing wiring isn't too much, one just powers the fan on (full speed) and the other one switches in a resistance to run the fan at a lower speed.

The resistor is a Vauxhall Corsa D heater resistor which i've fitted inside the heater in the airflow to keep it cool, I bought one from e-bay which came complete with the wiring connector.

Just need to fit a fused supply and it will be another job of the list.

[homersimpson]

I've been doing a bit more on the car and good news, its now on the road and i've driven it then broken down then driven it a bit more and broken down again.

The fuel pump was working intermittantly and finally gave up at the bottom of my road which isn't a great place  but could have been worse, I walked home, got another one, swapped it over and off it went again.

It still needs a bit of tuning and the propshaft alignment needs setting but it goes ok and its not that slow compared to the 3.8 which is probably helped by the low (4.27:1 I think) diff.  I've only had it up to around 40mph and no doubt it will be screaming at 60mph.

I ordered a new pump made of finest Cheap and fitted that today and its fixed the issue, sadly no photos as I was so busy driving it!

I've finished the heater wiring and also fitted and wired up the wiper motor which now uses a Lucas 14W mini wiper motor, it seems to work well.

I will get some pictures tommorrow of the bits i've done if I can get a garage pass but as i've been on it every night this week I might not be allowed out to play :-)

[goldnrust]

Wohooo! That's exciting to get out for the first drive!

First drive is always a mixed bag though, as you found, as it just tends to show you a bunch of issues you didn't realise were there! At leats fuel pump is an otherwise simple fix

I've got the same diff in my Daimler I think, it does sit north of 3,000 rpm at 60mph, but the v8 is quite happy there, it doesn't feel stressed and its quite happy sitting there for many miles without getting warm or showing any signs of unhappiness.

[homersimpson]

Apr 21, 2023 21:57:37 GMT goldnrust said:

Wohooo! That's exciting to get out for the first drive!

First drive is always a mixed bag though, as you found, as it just tends to show you a bunch of issues you didn't realise were there! At leats fuel pump is an otherwise simple fix

I've got the same diff in my Daimler I think, it does sit north of 3,000 rpm at 60mph, but the v8 is quite happy there, it doesn't feel stressed and its quite happy sitting there for many miles without getting warm or showing any signs of unhappiness.

Yes it is great and now its running reasonably well its nice to start to see how it feels on the road, one thing is that the steering is quite light (the exact opoosite of the 3.8 non PAS car I have) and so i'm thinking of a smaller steering wheel as my original one isn't in great condition anyway.

A bit more tuning and it should be good, I still need to get the carpets which i'm saving up for to buy next month as this month was seatbelts which I needed before driving it.

One amazing thing was that when I went to tax it I needed to do it a post office because it was last taxed in 1977 and is still PLG on the logbook, I found a local post office that does vehicle tax and went in with my log book and MOT declartion and they knew exactly what I needed and taxed it there and then and sent the V5C off to have the tax class changed, I was expecting a lot of hassle but they just knew what needed to be done.  Its kind of sad that I came out of there really impressed and happy that someone was able to do their job well (no disrespect to them though as they were great).

[kevins]

Great progress, I found the same when my TR7 was 40 years old went to the post office and they did it all with no questions, had the new reg doc in a few days to. Almost the complete opposite of nything I have tried to get done at the DVLA.

[Snowglobe]

Apr 21, 2023 21:08:52 GMT homersimpson said:

I ordered a new pump made of finest Cheap and fitted that today

absolutely love it, I need to remember that phrase.

[voucherboy]

Apr 21, 2023 21:08:52 GMT homersimpson said:

........ and also fitted and wired up the wiper motor which now uses a Lucas 14W mini wiper motor, it seems to work well.............

Looking forward to seeing the new wiper motor.  I'm faced with the same issue as yourself.  So pleased you've actually driven it - beer tonight?

[homersimpson]

Apr 23, 2023 22:02:19 GMT voucherboy said:

Apr 21, 2023 21:08:52 GMT homersimpson said:

........ and also fitted and wired up the wiper motor which now uses a Lucas 14W mini wiper motor, it seems to work well.............

Looking forward to seeing the new wiper motor.  I'm faced with the same issue as yourself.  So pleased you've actually driven it - beer tonight?

Yes definately time for a beer, it drives well but I needed to set the propshaft alignment which is quite critical on the automatic cars with the the two piece propshafts.

I've taken some photos of the wiper motor, the tube in the pictures is a new one I made because my old one was rusty and snapped when I tried to bend it but its the same length as the original so if you can bend yours it should work fine.  You can also use the original motor but I changed to a more modern motor for reliability and because the wiring and operation to the original motor is ridicuoulsy complicated for what it does, only downside is you loose the reverse park and the mini motor i've used only has a 110 degree gear whereas the Jaguar one is 120 degrees.  You can of course buy different gears for the 14W motor to correct this, also because the motor is on the other side of the car from where its mounted in the mini the wipers park on the correct side which is a bonus.

One other thing I've found is that when i've connected the fluid level warning switch the warning light in the car is on all the time, either mine is stuck or the connection is made when its full and open when its empty (normally open closing on fluid).  I would be interested if yours is the same, although I recall yours was a slightly later one its probably the same principal and might be so its fail safe (i.e. loss of the circuit puts the light on whereas the Jaguar MK2 circuit needs to complete the circuit so if its unplugged or a wire is broken you won't know).

[voucherboy]

Excellent solution Homer. I knew you'd come up with a neat solution. I had looked at mounting the motor under the dash inside the car, but there's a lot going on in there and no location presented itself as ideal. I did briefly consider something like you've done, but quickly discounted it, thinking that the bend radius would be too extreme. But, mounting the motor horizontally instead overcomes that to a degree (no pun intended!). How do you find the movement, does it bind at all or is it running smooth. I'm guessing you used microbore copper heating pipe, brilliant.

Now, regarding the brake fluid reservoir, I fell into the same trap as you. I designed my loom assuming that the connection would close when low, thus operating the lamp. This would be the most simplistic in operation and (as you clearly know) the way the MK2 system works. I'm guessing too that this newer configuration is a fail-safe as you describe. Problem is that now that the reservoir is full, I can't test for sure without draining it! But, given we've both had identical results, my money is on 'open when low'. Also, it gives me the same issue as you in getting the warning lamp to illuminate. More bloody relays or transistors even!

[pollystag]

Make sure the handbrake is off when checking the low fluid light as it doubles up as the handbrake on light.
Steve.

[homersimpson]

Apr 27, 2023 20:39:54 GMT pollystag said:

Make sure the handbrake is off when checking the low fluid light as it doubles up as the handbrake on light.
Steve.

Yes i've checked mine with the handbrake off, plugging the reservoir in brings the light on and unplugging turns it off so the switch is connected in the reservoir.

[homersimpson]

Apr 27, 2023 19:50:43 GMT voucherboy said:

Excellent solution Homer. I knew you'd come up with a neat solution. I had looked at mounting the motor under the dash inside the car, but there's a lot going on in there and no location presented itself as ideal. I did briefly consider something like you've done, but quickly discounted it, thinking that the bend radius would be too extreme. But, mounting the motor horizontally instead overcomes that to a degree (no pun intended!). How do you find the movement, does it bind at all or is it running smooth. I'm guessing you used microbore copper heating pipe, brilliant.

Now, regarding the brake fluid reservoir, I fell into the same trap as you. I designed my loom assuming that the connection would close when low, thus operating the lamp. This would be the most simplistic in operation and (as you clearly know) the way the MK2 system works. I'm guessing too that this newer configuration is a fail-safe as you describe. Problem is that now that the reservoir is full, I can't test for sure without draining it! But, given we've both had identical results, my money is on 'open when low'. Also, it gives me the same issue as you in getting the warning lamp to illuminate. More bloody relays or transistors even!

I was thinking of just a simple changeover relay as you mentioned, but of course its not a very ellegant solution.  I can't find any details on the switch and it seems to only be available as a complete unit with the reservoir from what i've been able to find so not much chance of changing it for a different one.

The wiper motor seems to run well, I haven't used it much as yet but on test it was ok.  From what I read copper pipe isn't the best thing to use as it can wear so if your steel pipe is ok and can be bent it would be best to do that, mine kinked hence the replacement. 

[kevins]

could you fit one of the caps with a level switch in it I believe they work in the way you describe,

www.carbuilder.com/uk/brake-fluid-reservoir-cap-with-2-pin-plug-and-fly-leads

[voucherboy]

Apr 28, 2023 7:08:15 GMT kevins said:

could you fit one of the caps with a level switch in it I believe they work in the way you describe,

www.carbuilder.com/uk/brake-fluid-reservoir-cap-with-2-pin-plug-and-fly-leads

Excellent idea Kevins, I'll check it out,  Thanks. 

[homersimpson]

I've been struggling to get the car running right and i've found that when its warm and i've driven it for a bit it starts to run badly and then nearly cutout although it generally doesn't actually stop but I have to pull over and then let it idle for a bit and then it picked up again and I can go a few hundred yards (if i'm lucky) and it does it again.

Today i've checked all the jets in the carb are clean, the accelerator pumps are pumping and checked the idle mixture screw, the engine runs well when it does which makes me think its not timing related.

Plugs are a bit black but thats probably because i'm doing a lot of warming up on the drive and then driving a low speeds.

When it runs its like this (the noise isn't right on the video and makes it sound rattly and there is a slight drip from the front carb as I hadn't tightened this fully after opening it to see if there was pressure.

This is a video of it in the garage and as you can see its lovely and smooth, barely a vibration at idle.

Today I checked all the jets were clear, then warmed it up in the garage and reset the idle mixture and idle speed to make sure it was good.  I also put a colour tune plug on it which showed that it was running well on both front and rear banks (one plug from each carb was checked) with a nice bunsen blue flame which went slightly yellow on inital revup when the accelerator pump was putting fuel in.

I put 4 gallons of fuel in previously and i've been running it a lot in the garage and have driven around 20 miles on that so thought that maybe it was low on fuel so as it was running well I thought I would go and get fuel.

I got about two miles with it running really well then at around 30mph it started to lose power and I had to pull over and it would idle but struggle to rev. 

After 30 seconds or so it picked up and I got it to go again for another few hundred yards and then the same again, I kept limping it along until I got to the island with the petrol station where it just wouldn't go but would idle.

I pulled over onto some chevrons on the side of the island and had a look at the fuel filter in the boot which was pretty much empty, the filter in the front was full but that doesn't really tell me much as it fills and empties from the top so it always looks full.

I switched it off and waited a couple of minutes and after starting it again it was fine so I dashed over to the petrol station and filled it up,.

Driving back I got about two miles again and then the same again and I limped it along with it cutting out once but immediatley restarting and then going again.

It does feel like its running out of fuel hence why it will idle but won't rev which makes me wonder if my pump of finest Cheap isn't cutting the mustard.

I would have thought if it was ignition it wouldn't idle very well but as an old mechanic once told me "most fuel system problems are electrical" meaning a lot of people think its a fuel problem but its usually ignition so i'm just not sure.

It has one of those electronic ignition kits on it but i've fitted these to other cars and they have been ok but of course the means nothing.

One other thing its that it has occassionaly backfired through the carb when its running badly which makes me wonder if its a weak mixture, generally though it won't do that.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

[jamesd1972]

Does sound very much like the fuel pump.
Can you get a pressure gauge on it or put its output into a can and calculate the flow rate ?
Sure that you’ll get there.
James

[daddyshortlegs]

Fuel hose internally swollen? would look ok on the outside, my dad had that on his 100E back in the 60's