Here at Sports Car Services we have been wallowing in E-type Jaguars for weeks, and it’s a state of affairs likely to continue well into the new year.  We’ve shown you some bits and pieces of our Jaguar work load, and not to minimize it at all, we’re certainly appreciative of the work that’s been entrusted to us.  But this week it seemed like a good idea to have a look at someone else’s E-type work load.

Regular readers of these missives are aware that virtually the one thing we do not do here is what we politely refer to as ‘Paint & Fender’ work.  It’s not in our skill set and even if it was we don’t have the space for it anyway.  However, we are extremely fortunate to have those services of the very highest order close at hand in the person of Jason Marechaux of East Coast Collision & Restoration in Mount Holly, Vermont, just a little way up the road.

An E-type in a sordid state of affairs

Here’s a closer view of the series 2 E-type just visible over Mr. Marechaux’ left shoulder, a hideously bad repair featuring the liberal use of the slide pull hammer, a.ka. “Dent Puller” used in an ultimately futile attempt to pull the bonnet close enough into shape in order to smooth it up with a five gallon pail of plastic filler.  It wasn’t very nice.   A subsequent picture not published here shows that at least a quarter of the bonnet appeared to have been used to backstop a rifle range.

Repair panel cliquoed into place

You won’t find them making this  repair at Benny’s Auto Body.  Panel beating is mostly a lost art now.  Body Shops are not restoration shops, they’re adrift at sea when it comes to this kind of specialized work.  We know, we see it all the time.

It’s kind of distressing sometimes to see car owners throwing good money after bad, but the E-types, at least, have arrived at their station in life where making a good repair often times builds dollar for dollar value back into the car, a stage their lesser breathern (except for the Austin Healeys) haven’t made it to yet.

Joe Delaney fits up an E-type inner rocker panel

As bad as the blue car might look, this one (once white) was even worse.  It had suffered the indignity of having basic structural repairs carried out in bed iron.  Presumably the repairer didn’t mind having his box spring & mattress on the floor.  What looked like a straight forward sheetmetal restoration turned out to be anything but, and slowly but steadily this series 1 E-type was reduced to its most basic elements, perhaps the sole identifying characteristics at this point being the shape of the TX tunnel and the windshield posts !   Joe Delaney is one of Jason’s two skilled fitters, but it would be entirely accurate to say that even he was taken aback by the extent to which this car had been molested.

Here’s a view from the back, but please don’t call before Spring.  They’re kinda’ busy right now at E.C.C.&R.

A Marechaux-built rear floor crossmember

Near winter conditions on the Westminster West road

Here in the Northeast it’s readily apparent that we’ve passed the prime driving season for the two seat sports car.  In my personal experience this doesn’t mean that we necessarily need to give it up completely, but that depends on what you’re driving and your attitude toward it.  Speaking personally I made the switch this past weekend from my MGC GT which is a very nice car, to my MGB GT which has four studded snow tires and always starts regardless of how cold it gets.  It helps somewhat that I acquired the car fully loaded.. with plastic filler, so I’m not really hurting it any.

Heading for a rendezvous with the Essex-Charlotte ferry

The day started a little early because we decided that it would be a good idea to beat an Arctic front bringing some cold and a little snow down from Canada.  The destination was Charlotte about ten miles south of Burlington, Vermont where I was meeting the owner of this very nice TR4.  The arrangements couldn’t be much more convenient.  Barry Cook put his Triumph on the ferry and drove three miles home.  I drove another three miles and picked up a local MG TD and skedaddled back to Westminster ahead of the weather.  In the picture here Butch is tying the back of the car down.  John, already having finished tying down the front is headed to bring another car into the shop.

Steve paints an E-type IRS cage

Butch, John & Steve are the reasons why we crank work out of here that we’ll match up against anybody’s.  The IRS cage that Steve’s painting here is hardly going to be on display to anyone outside of a Jiffy Lube service bay, but it’s a prime example of how we go about installing quality.  There is a very old cliche that if it looks right it is right.  Take a look under the hood of your car.  If it doesn’t look right maybe you ought to be ringing us up.

Checking bearing clearances with Plastigage

Measuring the "crush"

This is the inside of the MGB engine which is currently on my engine stand.  It takes us about 20 hours to assemble a typical four cylinder engine, even though we could probably bolt most of them together in six.  The extra time is taken up in ensuring that everything is right.  Our initial checks for stuff like crankshaft end float, bearing clearances, piston ring gaps and cam timing easily consume about a day and a half.  But as you can see, this engine already looks better on the inside than most other people’s engines do on the outside.  These are the standards we work to.

___________________________________________

It is noted here with some amusement that this is the 100th consecutive week that we’ve cobbled together this newsletter which does not arrive spam-like in your in-box, because you have to either seek it out on your own, or else thru something called an “R.S.S. feed” which we do not understand.  These facts not withstanding, right now about 350 people a day are taking a look at what’s posted here.

Thank you for being one of them.

TR4 on test Wednesday afternoon

Thanksgiving week is a short work week for us as we also take off the Friday after the holiday.  That fact not withstanding, we’ve gotten quite a bit done this week and although I’m not reporting out on all of it, I am reporting out on some of it.

John has pretty well turned the corner (an unintended pun) with the black TR4.  It’s a very nice car but there were a lot of odds & ends to tidy up beginning with the obliquely mounted generator (they work better when all three pulleys are operating in the same plane), a rear axle service including five new oil seals and a brake &

TR4 generator drive

Well worn clutch pedal

clutch master cylinder overhaul.  Here’s a picture of the generator drive alignment.  To our great amusement previous invoicing referenced a generator repair.  Part of the misalignment stemmed from the fact that the rear generator mounting wasn’t attached.  Good enough isn’t always good enough, except when you get away with it, I guess.  The fulcrum point at the end of the clutch pedal, doesn’t matter whether it’s MG, Triumph, Morgan or anything else, is always a high wear item.  Many years ago I once put a new clutch in an Austin Healey only to discover to my great consternation that I couldn’t back it out of the garage when I was done because of deterioration in the mechanical linkages !  So we weld ’em up & make a new round hole and replace the clevis pin.

Butch has put three days in, under, and around the two seater BN7 while Jag-man Steve has kept busy, too.

Crossing Lake Champlain

My own work week frequently includes Saturday and Sunday, it’s when I go fetch or return cars which are more than four hours away.

There are three ferrys that cross Lake Champlain until the Lake finally ices over, but being well south of the Lake my strategy has generally been to cross at Whitehall, New York or to take Vermont Rte. 22A which has to be one of the most wonderful rides in the northeast for a sports car.  It’s not twisty-windy, it’s an undulating road from Fair Haven up to Bridport (not a typo) through serious Vermont dairy country, broken up by just a couple of small towns.   The tractor-trailers will pass you going 70.

In Bridport we cut over to the Crown Point (Champlain) Bridge via Vt. Rte. 17.  For a while this wasn’t an option because the bridge was closed and demolished in 2009, but working at a speed almost unheard of in government, a new bridge was built and opened in 2011, and this is now once again our preferred route to Westport, N.Y. Essex and the Adirondaks where we’ve been to  Lake Placid & Saranac Lake several times recently.

The elegant New Crown Point Bridge, at dusk

MG TD: 8 quarts of water, no oil

Early last fall we were summoned to Northern New Jersey to deal with the aftermath of the high water from Hurricane Irene.  This MG TD was garaged not far from Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands.

A general look-over indicated a high water mark just below the dashboard and we removed the car to our shop in Westminster, Vt for remediation.  Exactly how long it was underwater is unknown, but it was obviously long enough to float every drop of oil out of the engine.  The car is in good order now, the flood damage completely remediated.  Call for instructions.

A TR4 from Essex, N.Y. with a surry top

You don’t often see a nice TR4 like this with a Surry top.  It landed unannounced on our stoop on Veteran’s Day, which we all had taken off.  Warner was passing thru the shop when it arrived and called me in from home where I was hoeing thru a good-sized pile of paperwork.

So today I decided to give John a break from project Jaguar in order to sort it out, John being a Triumph guy and all.  He’s been slogging right away at it, changing all the vital fluids and sorting out several fubars which had been  installed by various indifferent previous repairers.  His short list still includes a tuneup and then he’s done.

Shorrock supercharger mostly torn down

A lack of special tooling pushed me in the direction of Ken Booth at KNB Machining & Automation when I came up against components I couldn’t separate in the Shorrock C75B supercharger seen here last week.  When you have your own fully tooled machine shop you have options that are still outside our current grasp here.

Our first ‘Law of Sublets’ is that if someone else can do it better, faster, cheaper, then let ’em.  In any case, I went down to Ken’s shop in Westmoreland, N.H. and made sympathetic noises while he came up with the strategies to pull the thing apart

Last weekend saw a late case of Indian Summer, and Saturday under a deep blue sky, I took the Morgan for a final blast down a quiet country road before I put it up for the winter.

The yellow Moggie stretches its legs