About a year ago, a friend of mine offered me a free Jaguar 6 cylinder motor, and about a month ago said motor was finally obtained. My 87 year old friend had earmarked it for an MG TD special that he was building, but opted for an MGB drivetrain. I phoned him on a Friday, to see if I could grab it Saturday, and he said sure. The GF and I arrived expecting to load the truck (his truck that he kindly leant us), but he had loaded all of the motor parts, plus 3 or 4 carb set ups, at least 2 gearboxes in various states of completeness, and a mess of other bits. I still can't understand how or why he did all the heavy lifting, but I hope I'm in as good of shape as he is if I ever hit 87.
Picture of the haul in his truck:
We spent at least 2 hours unloading and briefly going through it all, it looks like there's at least a complete engine, plus a spare cylinder head. Unfortunately it only came with one polished cam cover, but a second one has since been found:
Now to digress slightly, in August I treated the GF to a two week trip to Scotland for her birthday. Most of the itintery was based around what she wanted to do, but I did manage to persuade her to let me visit the Moray Motor Museum in Elgin. In their collection they have a Tojeiro Jaguar, which I had wanted to see in person since chatting with my friend about the motor. Tom, one of the owners of the collection, kindly took us down to the workshop to see the Toj while they were prepping it for Goodwood:
Here's a shot of what it looks like assembled (not my photo):
Now back to the main story/build log, when we returned I started on collecting parts and creating a CAD file for the car. The CAD rendering looks like this so far:
And the one major bit I've collected so far, a Jag IRS setup mainly to harvest the diff and rear brakes:
The goal for the next four to six months is getting the Elan finished (it's currently off at paint), source all the needed "critical" parts so that I can finalize the chassis design, then hopefully start on the chassis and basic panels by this time next year. I have posted a wanted ad for a T5 as I'm unsure if there is enough bits in the boxes to build up the Jag Mk2 gearbox, plus it's tailshaft is just way too long. There is some bits to an Overdrive gearbox for a Mk2, but again I don't think it's complete.
I'll keep this thread updated as the design process continues and when I get various bits and pieces tidied up.