Hello from Bucks

[AlastairCM]

Hello

New member here from Bucks. Owner of an early 87 TWR XJS with quite a few of the TWR enhancements, although sadly not the ZF manual gearbox or the 6.0l engine. Car came with quite a lot of contemporaneous paperwork which supports that it's a genuine one.

Not sure if there are any other TWR owners on here. I've done quite a bit of work on searching out information on these cars in the form of collecting original magazine articles about the cars, pictures and any TWR documentation I can find, but I'm always always looking for more info. I acquired the car by accident rather than design, having intended to buy a standard XJS as a daily driver. I now feel a bit of an obligation to learn more about the history of these cars and keep it in a good authentic condition.

It's a long shot, but I'm currently looking for some info and reasonably clear pictures of the rear TWR brake hats for the two piece 10.65" vented rotors (I have the small pictures from the TWR brochures). I have some non-TWR rear rotors that are vented but one piece, but still fit the TWR rear calipers. I'd like to get some hats made to make the rear rotors closer to authentic if I can get hold of some rough dimensions (since getting hold of original replacement hats is now nigh on impossible). Failing that it will be guesswork based on the pictures I have, the existing one piece rear rotors and the designs from Kirby Palm's book.

I have a pipe dream about finding a genuine TWR 6.0l+ engine I can fit to the car. I also have another pipe dream that my wife will allow me to spend the money to buy it if I ever find one

Hope I can help out if there are ever any questions on the TWR XJS cars.

[BigCatXJS]

Welcome!

Genuine TWR cars (and Listers) are special; please do share your enthusiasm and technical input on this bulletin board.

Like many others on this forum, I generally consider it not best practice to share information around the financial cost of restoration/maintenance/enhancements with immediate family! When challenged, try phrases such as "I'm really pleased with [insert item here], it represented tremendous value for money and has increased the car's residue value..."

Good luck and hope to see you at one of the bulletin board / JEC events.

Rich.

[ptjs1]

AlastiarCM,

Hi and Welcome to the club!

As you can see from the member vehicles, we have 13 members who have updated their membership records to indicate that they have a TWR XJS (you don't seem to have updatd your own record as yet?).

So, although they are pretty rare, you can hopefully get some support from other TWR owners here on the Bulletin Board. Unfortunately, I don't believe that any of those 13 cars have the silver over blue colour scheme. As you've probably realised, it's difficult if not impossible to get hold of any official TWR build records.

It would be fairly easy for any paint factor to put a spectrometer on the car and tell you the paint code from that, so even if you don't know the jaguar paint colour, you'll be able to get paint made up to match.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "brake hats for the.....rotors". Do you mean covers for the rear brake disc calipers? If you post some pictures, perhaps we can help.

Hope that helps somewhat.

Good luck

Paul

[AlastairCM]

Paul

Thanks for the reply. The TWR front and back rotors are two piece. The central section is an alloy "hat" which the outer part, the vented outer disc, is bolted to.

Here is one of the TWR publicity pictures of the front & rear rotors. The black part you can see in the center of each rotor is the hat and you can see how it bolts to the outer section which is the vented disc. The rear rotor is the smaller one, without the AP caliper on it, and there are only 2 of the 6 bolts fixed on in this picture.

The hat for the rear rotors is pretty much just a flat disk I think (the front is a more complex shape but I have those). The advantage is that the hat is not a wear item. It is also easier to get them on and off with a Dana diff if you can separate the outer disk by unbolting it to get it out of the caliper.



Rather than work out the size of the hat and approximate the bolt positioning from the pictures and the existing one piece vented rotors I have, I was wondering if anyone had any more detailed pictures or measurements I could work from.

I will probably have to get the car colour analysed as you suggest, everyone I've asked doesn't know what colour they used, although its always the same colour on all the publicity photos.

I haven't got to grips with the site yet due to a lack of time, so I haven't explored the xjs register yet and put any details in. Nor done much about a signature either or looked at what else is available on the site.

Alastair

[nowtelse2do]

Hello Alastair.

As far as I'm aware there were two way's that you could purchase a TWR, either through a small handful of main dealers or if you owned a XJ-S, you approached TWR and asked them to convert it to TWR speck.

I think you will find that any TWRs colour is whatever Jaguar colour's were at the time of purchase or whatever the customer wanted. My car is a 84 and comes into the latter group, it was converted sometime between 22/01/1985 and 29/10/1985 by it's second owner. The colour of mine is standard Cobalt Blue (top half) Tender Blue (bottom half) Tender Blue wasn't a Jaguar colour, it was a Mazda colour, Walkinshaw raced and prepared Mazda's.

You will be very lucky to find anything regarding how many were converted but a figure between 250 and 300 is talked about. I don't know if the XJ's are included in those figures. As for any data, I have a couple of sheet's that I could scan and email to you if you pm me with your email address or post, A4 size.

I have the conversion sheet and the costs for it and also the service book with 6 TWR service stamps dating from 29/10/1985 at 14482ml unto 19/4/1988 at 56592ml and 2 services in between done by Bristol Motor's, Bristol Jaguar Main Dealer.

Can't help with your rear brake query, never seen mine off.

Dave

[AlastairCM]

Dave

Thanks for your reply, very pleased to finally speak to another TWR owner.

Yes as far a I am aware you could either go through one of the Jaguarsport authorised dealers or approach TWR direct. Some of the modifications (mostly anything non cosmetic) were only available if the car was sent to Kidlington. Mine was done via TWR direct, I know the dealer it was bought from (who are still in business) and they were not the Jaguarsport agent appointed for the area. Although the dealer later did some warranty repair work on the car using Jaguarsport replacement parts. I have collected original brochures and price lists to go with the one that came with car and I know roughly the dates each were in use so can verify it matches the time-frame of other documents about the car and was converted in early 1987.

I have no TWR service stamps out of my 12 stamps but 8 from the dealer that sold the car and was involved with it throughout most of its life and various owners. I have contemplated contacting them to see if they can provide any more info or paperwork I don't have, but do not know if they would be willing to provide copies or would charge me for it.

I would be very happy to receive any scans of information you have and will PM you. Likewise happy to scan anything I have in return that is of interest. I have a collection of most of the price lists between 84 and 87, I think all the brochures, the press pack at launch and about 6 magazine articles, in addition to the bits that came with my car.

As to numbers the only reference I have seen is to a quote from Tom Walkinshaw around the time of the Brussels motor show where the car was launched: "We don't want volume. We want to build about 3 week and do them to the highest possible standard.". I know TWR had 25 orders placed before the show, but not whether they ever stuck to the 3 a week volume (or whether like the 500 a year aim for the XJRS, it proved overly optimistic). I assume that didn't include dealer modified cosmetic only cars which didn't need the facilities at Kidlington. That would give less than 600 performance modified cars from 84 to 88. I have also seen the 300 number used, although mostly by people offering cars for sale often of questionable provenance hyping up the sales pitch, but have never been able to find out where that number originated from.

I had heard that non-Jaguar colours were available and always useful to have these bits of information confirmed.

Alastair