As well as the gear lever I did a few other jobs over the winter. The handbrake has always been appalling and last year barely scraped through the MOT. I thought I would take a look at it. There was a good article in the JEC magazine a while ago about how to improve the XJS inboard handbrake. Since ...

Using the Z3 lever caused another issue - The Jaguar lever has a threaded end for the gear knob, the Z3 lever just has a plain rod. I decided to try to make a new gear knob. I bought a couple of steel balls used for the top of railings and set about one in the lathe. I am very much a self taught beg...

As you can see below the original Jaguar lever has a much shorter end. Its also worth noting that my lever is much more 'bent' (on the left) than the Z3 lever - I had it cut and re-welded when the car was built. I have not had the new lever bent - but I may still need to do so, to get it to fall to ...

Next up comes the gear lever itself. The lever has a ball moulded to it at the base that runs in spherical bushes - which also wear. To get the gear lever out there is a circlip washer that needs to be removed from the top. Once removed this allows a retaining washer and spring to be lifted up and o...

Ive been spending some time over the winter doing a few bits and pieces to the XK120, so I thought I would document the work here. The gear shift has been getting decidedly sloppy over the last few years, so I decided to use this winter to do something about it. I started investigating places that c...

Another few years have gone on and Ive been enjoying the XK120. I while ago I cracked the passenger side windscreen glass and set about replacing it a couple of weeks ago. I thought it worth sharing the experience as it was not as simple as I had hoped. Removing the windscreen is a case of unbolting...

Paul is correct, the car does not use the original subframe - it is a bespoke built chassis that includes mounting points for the suspension and steering components. I have a build thread in the Replicas section on this forum if you are interested A picture of a standard car would be very useful for...

Hi all, I have a Nostalgia XK120 replica, based on a 1988 XJS. Looking at my steering rack and track rod ends I see that the track rod ends are not coming straight out from the rack, but are angled slightly backwards. Is anyone able to check on an XJS to see whether track rod ends are angled forward...

Hi all, I followed the advice above, the throttle body was pretty clean as I cleaned it well when I built the car 3 years ago, but the air gap was a bit small so I opened that up. The idle control valve was a bit gummy. I had not cleaned that before as I was a bit wary, not really knowing how it wor...

Thanks Al, The second photo shows that the speedo goes between the sensor signal output and ground making it a PNP type (the simplest description I have found is here https://www.schneider-electric.co.uk/en/faqs/FA142566/ although this is pretty good too https://automation-insights.blog/2011/01/18/i...

Hi All, Im after some pointers on where to start fault finding. I have a Nostalgia XK120 replica with the drive train out of a 1988 3.6L XJS (so the AJ6 engine with the round air filter). I last used the car a couple of weeks ago and it was running fine. I went to start it up yesterday and it will n...

Hi Al, Thanks for the response. I can confirm that the current sensor head is clean, and it is accurately gapped from the bolt heads. I believe the sensor cable is earthed corectly, but the run is under the carpet and I have not yet stripped the interior and dash to check it. The behaviour of the sp...

Hi all, I have a Smiths electronic speedo in my Nostalgia XK120 with a dedicated sender that senses the bolts on the prop shaft. I want to remove this sender as I think it could be causing some erratic readings on the speedo, and instead use the original sender from the donor XJS that is mounted int...

Hi all, I have a Smiths electronic speedo in my Nostalgia XK120 with a dedicated sender that senses the bolts on the prop shaft. I want to remove this sender as I think it could be causing some erratic readings on the speedo, and instead use the original sender from the donor XJS that is mounted int...

Well its been a busy winter, but not on the XK120. I also have an MGB that has suffered from the lack of attention, so this winter saw me replacing all the suspension bushes, as well as stripping down and repainting the suspension and underside of the car. That resulted in an MOT with no advisories ...