The Million Dollar Jag

I am wondering if I should bring the new rotors to work with me for a stress relief. I am somewhat concerned that we won't be able to season them properly.

That being said I know where there is 3 miles of road that I have never seen anyone on. Power Line Road near Sacramento Airport. Start at W. Riego Rd and you should be able to go north for 3 miles with maybe only 3 or 4 residences along the entirety of the road. We would have to do it during the day unless we put headlights on the car.

I am going to pick up the new pads next monday.

we are going to want to break in the pads on the car so stress relieving isn't going to do it. If we are willing to sacrifice a track session we can just do it there or take it to your road

I emailed the track day people about bringing the car as they have a no project, primer, or dents rule.

they said no
so sears point it is

Well they're no fun.

Boo, that's not very cool of them. I guess they don't want our Jag to beat all of the rich cars.

As for this weekend...
it's brake, intake, and fluid change time on Saturday?
We also need to figure out how we are going to get to Infineon in a couple of weekends and then again for Lemons.

I am working on getting us to Infineon. I am in the process of lining up several trucks, but trailers are still the limiting factor. We could probably get by with renting one for the track day, but it would be good to have a more concrete one for the race.

Who else has this coming Monday (Presidents Day) off? I understand that Alan will be picking up the brakes on that day so it would be good to have a work day to get the brakes all together.

One thing we don't want to forget about is the bushings for the front swaybar.

I have Monday off as well, so I can help do the brakes then. Saturday can be devoted to fluids, weight reduction, intake, and other miscellaneous things. Alan, did you find the sway bar bushings? We can do those if you found them, or I can order some today and they might be here by the weekend.

Ok, so I was doing a thought experiment with one of our junior machinists over lunch and came up with a couple of possible ways to make front spring stiffeners.

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The description of the three designs of the spacers goes from top to bottom. All three spacers use wedges to stiffen the springs and variations on a 3/16" bolt to connect the two sides. The width (no viewable dimension) of the wedges is ~3/8" so that the inner ones can be slipped through the coils.

1. The top spacer is the simplest. The bolt would be fitted with a lock washer and then affixed to the end of a telescoping magnet. This would be fished in through the opposing side's coils and into the awaiting inner wedge. The bolt would be pulled all the way through the outer wedge and then have a washer and nut affixed to it. The lock washer on the inner wedge should keep the head of the bolt from spinning while the nut is tightened down (or so the machinist assured me). It just occurred to me that we could just make the bolt extra long and have the two wedges already attached to each other before slipping the inner one in place.

2. The middle spacer was the first design that we came up with. A helicoil is used to provide an extra strong fixture for the bolt to thread into. The shoulder on the inner wedge helps to keep the helicoil from pulling through.

3. The final design that we came up with utilizes a slot in the inner wedge to hold a nut in place on two sides. The nut is kept from falling off with tape or glue or bubblegum until the bolt can be run into it. This one requires some additional machining that I am not qualified to do (end-mill) and so it make take some additional time to make.


What do you guys think?

I like the second design the best.

1) It won't take additional time as is required with the 3rd
2)We just need to tighten one bolt from the outside of the coil and don't have to hold any other nut or bolt in place
3)The bulk of the material is inside the coil and not the outside and therefore won't be interfering with anything outside of the coils

I don't see any reason why they wouldn't work besides the threads on the Al getting destroyed but the force from the car should be distributed amongst several units anyways (4 or so?). I like them and think that they will work. Excellent work Cass!

so I replaced the blinker switch, it still doesn't start.
also the dash speaker was broken but the new one works fine which leads me to my next symptom. when I turn on the hazards the speaker and dash are blinking as they should but after a few seconds the speaker starts clicking faster than it should.

I think it might be time to call the experts.

I just put up an post of the Jaguar forums. Hopefully we get lucky with a stroke of genius from someone.

This was a helpful find from one of the members...

http://www.captainjaguarscathouse.com/Electrical_Guides/XJ12%201994%20Elec%20Guide.pdf

While cruising through everything I could find this morning, I cam across this....

Lamp Modules
The lamp modules give problems on all older XJ40s.
The first thing to note is that these modules' concern is not only monitoring bulb failures, but also switching of the bulbs themselves.
Each lamp module gets signals from the various devices like headlamp switch, brake light switch, indicator switch etc. These signals trigger relays in the modules, which switch voltage to the bulbs.
An in-built circuit checks the resistance of the bulbs, if anything abnormal is measured, it grounds one of the lines to the VCM and the warning signal in the instrument panel lights up.
Two different bulb failure signals are delivered by each module:
Indicator failure (pink)
all others (pink/grey).
When the VCM receives the indicator failure signal it changes the frequency of the audible signal, and flashing arrow on the dash when the indicators are working.


Alan - This may explain your change in tempo of the indicator sound. I found it at http://reocities.com/MotorCity/downs/4487/xj40book.html in section 3.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm kinda lost in all of this.

Another lead that I have found from my adventures on the forums is a recommendation by two experienced people to check the inertia switch (that supposedly cuts everything leading from the ecu) that could have been tripped when we put it back on the ground this last time. I asked where I would locate such a switch and will let you guys know when I hear back from them.

Ed / Cassidy wrote:I'm not gonna lie, I'm kinda lost in all of this.

I think at the heart of it all, is that the ecu checks for all of the electrical components in the steering column at startup and won't start without them... I think. I say lets reinstall the actual blinker switch and see what happens.

What do we have left to do before Sunday?

Find a truck and trailer?
Fix the transmission leak?
Wear down the breaks some more
...

Hotel options: 2 queens, non smoking

EcoLodge Inn, Novato $109 per night

Travelodge, Novato $140 total for both nights

Days Inn, Novato $170 total for both nights

Let me know what you guys think and I will book the room this week.

The cheapest place works for me. I have no preference as long as it has a shower.

I told Jay that we were not doing the deli meat theme.

He says that he's heartbroken and that all of my teammates are pussies...

So maybe we can do the meat theme on the Midget. Less meat and we can reach the center of the car without having to lean on it. It could be a "Little Smokey" theme.

The hotel room is booked and we are registered for Reno.

Sweet... I will keep my fingers crossed for Fluffy's health

I took the wheel off to take a quick look at what was going on. the slop is almost entirely in the wheel bearings. tightening them down fixes the slop but the wheel get hard to turn so those will need to be replaced. The other thing I noticed is that the brake pad isn't sitting in the caliper correctly. I'll take a closer look at that tomorrow. finally fuel fail 45 is the code for a bad o2 sensor so add that to the list of things to buy.

we could just trace this for the wing http://www.modified.com/tech/modp-1103-wing-man-tech-talk/index.html