It's been a while since posting here, so I figured it's time to start another build log.....
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.
Here's a pic of the "parts" haul:
We spent about 2 hours unloading and going through everything. It looks like there's one complete motor, a spare head, and various bits to various gearboxes.
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:
A pic of it complete (not my pic):
Now back to the plan/goal/story, since returning I've been playing around with a CAD model in hopes of developing it to the point where I can send the chassis info out for tube cutting. I've managed to obtain a Jag diff, MGB front uprights, wire wheel hubs and various minor pieces. A set of wire wheels was ordered recently, hopefully they'll arrive in the next few weeks. The chassis rendering looks like this at the moment:
The reasoning for certain parts is to keep it close enough to the actual Tojeiro. The front uprights on the car appear to be Austin Cambridge, but MGB are very close:
The diff (seen in the earlier photos), appears to be a Salisbury type diff which is very similar to the Jag IRS diff:
Anyways, I have to get the Elan finished (the body is currently out for paint) before I can really start on fabrication, but I'll keep this thread updated as things progress.
Almost forgot, I built a finger squisher / English wheel a few years ago, so the plan at the moment is to fabricate the body from aluminum. The center section should be fairly straightforward as it's all single curvature, but the front and rear panels are going to a challenge.
And, a second polished type cam cover was sourced, so the motor now looks like this:
I think it looks much better than the ribbed covers that came with the motor (and yes the exhaust one will require some welding to fix the gaping hole).