Nostalgia XK120 build

[rknowles74]

For one final update I have now driven the car home from Goodwood where it was on display for the Revival.

Nostalgia have done a superb job of finishing the car, as you can see from the pictures. I had a great fun drive home too.

[RoyC]

What a great looking car! I bet you can't stop smiling.

I hope the weather allows you to put a few miles on it before winter.

Roy

[NATONEIL]

Did you see the car going through the IVA? I would be interested in knowing if the car was presented completely or if certain period components were left of or modified to get it through.

[rknowles74]

Hi Neil,

I wasn't present at the IVA myself, but I understand that certain components are not on the car during the test. I believe the main culprits are the bumpers, rear light clusters and clips for the weather gear, which would not meet the rule about edge radiuses.

Regards,
Richard

[mikeduff]

a great tale and inspiring story. I'll pass it to a friend who asked about 120 self-build kits only yesterday.

Mike

[rknowles74]

I thought it was time I updated this thread, and have just realised it is over 2 years since I posted last.
In that time I have moved house which involved an extension and a lot of DIY so Ive not done as much driving as I would have hoped. I soon realised that getting the car through IVA is one thing. Making it comfortable to drive is another.
I had a lot of pain with the coolant hoses not sealing properly, and the coolant header tank being below the top of the radiator. That meant the coolant temperature sensor was at the highest point in the system, and so often was not covered with water. I resolved these two issues by swapping to a temperature sensor from Revotec in the radiator top hose, and using sealant on the hose joints. Im not entirely comfortable with the sealant and still suffer from poor joints, but the root cause is that I can not find hoses that are sufficiently tight on all of the fittings.

The other more significant issue is that the problem with the rear brakes that meant the first IVA was failed was that the differential was leaking oil, and since the brakes are inboard they were getting covered in oil. Not good for stopping ability.
After looking at what it would take to change the differential oil seals I decided it was not something I wanted to do myself so after advise from this site contacted AJS Engineering, where Alan agreed to do the work for me.

The hard part was getting the rear end apart.
The differential is bolted up to the chassis from the top, then the fuel tank installed above it, then the rear body installed. That left a gap about 2 inches wide between the Diff and the tank to get my hands into to undo 4 bolts. That was really not much fun, and only possible with the car lifted up to a decent height (Since the build I had bought myself a scissor lift).
A trolley jack with a log plank bolted to it was used to lower the full assembly down out of the car.

Once on the ground stripping the Diff from the rear end was pretty easy.
Since I didnt want to strip the rear end again any time soon I decided to replace the brake disks, and of course the pads since the 'old' ones had been steeped in oil for many months.

AJS Engineering returned the diff saying that they had replaced a number of the internal clutch plates since they were scored. When I bought the donor car I was told that the diff had only been rebuilt a couple of years previously - however given the quality of work on the rest of the car it doesnt surprise me that it needed doing again. Putting the whole rear end assembly back together was fairly straight forward, followed by another few hours of scrapped knuckles getting the last 4 bolts into place.

Jobs still left to do involve sealing the windscreen so it doesnt blow bubbles at me in the rain, getting the exhaust modified so I can get at the rear suspension grease fittings, and getting the car through its first MOT - due this summer.

[NATONEIL]

Your last update in November was fairly positive. We are now starting to edge out of the maintenance season. How goes things?

[rknowles74]

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 this year so I consider it a job well done.

On the XK120 one of the useability issues was the comfort of the seats. I asked for, and got, bucket seats. However these look good, but are lacking in the ability to recline, any lumbar support, and very little support for your thighs, so get very painful after an hour of so. While working on the MGB I measured up the B seats - which are a little too large.

MG Midget seats on the other hand are a little smaller, so I took a punt and bought some on ebay. I then had to make them fit. The seat 'legs' are too wide to use to mount the runners to the floor - the tunnel gets in the way. So I made up some cross pieces, and mounted the original XK120 seat runners to those at roughly the original spacing.

In my measurements I had not accounted for the seat belt mounts, which are on posts up from the floor on the outside edges of the cabin. To clear these I have ended up with the seats angled out slightly, so in effect you now sit facing slightly out from centre. However when driving you dont really notice.

If the seats prove to be suitably comfortable then I will bite the bullet and get them re-covered to match the rest of he interior. (They are black at present, but im having trouble uploading the picture)

[NATONEIL]

I am very lucky the seats in my SS100 fit me well, despite me being tall and often suffering back pain. I know it is a problem when for one reason or another you find you cannot spend as much time in a car or on a bike as you would like. Good luck with your trials.

[rknowles74]

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 the side supports - the nuts are held together on a plate, so make sure that does not drop into the depths of the wing. The central pillar also needs removing (so its a dashboard out job). There are a couple of screws holding the glass and its surround into the pillars - fairly easy to undo.

The hard part was finding some glass.
I had already ordered replacement glass for an XK120 from SNGBarrett. However now my glass was out of the frame it was clearly different. My glass has a flat top whilst the replacement is curved.
It turns out that Nostalgia use a slightly different (and smaller!) size glass to the standard car.
I contacted Pilkinton who talked me through how to measure my glass to compare to their current sizes - The Nostalgia uses their 'SP0073' glass product - yes they could get me a screen, but it was on 12 week order time. (and at least 2x the price of the pair of screens I had).

So - reading around I see that laminated glass can be cut down to size. I phoned around a bit and found a local glazier willing to try to cut down my 'new' screens. They did an excellent job while I waited, cutting a little off two edges of the new screens to make them fit the surrounds!

Some pictures of the difference between the screens should be below.

re-fitting the screens was nothing more than a fight as they are in slightly different positions meaning the screw holes didnt quite line up, and the hood is now very tight.

[NATONEIL]

Well done. The glass in my Suffolk is minimal so I am lucky, I did however crack my windscreen and sourced a replacement from Suffolk Sportscars cheaper than I could get one made.

Stay Safe

Neil

[rknowles74]

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 could rebuild Getrag 265 boxes, and they appear few and far between.

Whilst doing this research I came to understand a little more about the gear lever and rods that connect it to the gearbox, and thought it was worth refreshing these to remove some of the wear. I also thought it was worth changing the gear lever itself for one with a shorter through, to try to reduce how far forward the level needs to go to get into 3rd gear.

There are a number of different bushes in the Jaguar 5 speed manual - its Getrag 265 box that is also used on Opel Monza's and many BMWs - this was to be a useful source of information an parts.

First is the platform that the shift lever sits on - it is attached to the gearbox with rubber top hat type washers. Mine had completely disintegrated. These are available on ebay, so I went with a polyurethane set since I thought they would help with accurate shifting.
The picture shows the shift platform. The mounting bushes go through the 4 large round holes

Next up is the connecting joint between the shift rod leaving the gearbox and the short rod attached to the bottom of the gear lever. This has a couple of roll pins, which on my car has worn and introduced a fair amount of play. These joints appear to be common across all cars that use the Getrag box. I purchased mine from a place in Germany that specialises in Opel Monza's, but suspect there is a BMW part as well.

Although there didn’t seem a huge amount of play in this joint now everything is refreshed I think replacing this made the biggest single difference to the amount of slop in the linkage.

[rknowles74]

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 over the gear lever, as well as the upper ball joint bush. With the bottom of the lever detached from the shift rod it is possible to pull the entire lever up and out of the shift platform. This should leave the lower ball joint bush in the shift platform, which needs to be prised out.

After a few trial and error attempts to find the correct upper and lower bushes I hit on the correct parts. The parts wanted are from early BMW's - I think I used a 1970's 2002 for part numbers in the end, but the same bushes are used across a number of models.
The upper ball cup is part 23411466110
The lower ball cup is part 25111207744

I can also say that the one piece bushes from later BMWs, and also Opels do not fit - they are too wide to fit into the shift platform.

The lower bush pushes into the shift platform, but the upper bush does not fit over the lever. The lever is too wide to allow the bush to drop down over it. As a result I had to cut the bush with a knife (so no material is removed) so I could fit it to the lower part of the lever.


Whilst I was doing this work I also wanted to make the car slightly easier to drive - it was always quite a stretch to get 3rd gear from the drivers seat. I though fitting a lever with a shorter throw would reduce the distance forward that the lever had to be when in 1st/3rd/5th.

Being used in BMWs means there are a lot of options around for 'short shift' levers. Many of these options are aftermarket, and so cheap I suspect they are rubbish. However in my investigations I realised that many people thought the best option is to use the shift lever from a 1.9l Z3. The picture below shows the many different lever options from production BMWs. The movement ratio is written on the right, and the car it comes from on the left.

The ratio is calculated by the distance of the shift rod connector bolt from the centre of the ball joint, compared to the distance of the top of the lever from the centre of the ball joint. The longer the ball to connector distance the less hand movement is needed.

[rknowles74]

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 hand nicely.

Fitting the Z3 lever is simply case of dropping it in to the new lower bush in the shift platform, slotting the new upper bush around it, and then dropping the spring, washer and retaining circlip back into place.

With the lever back in the car I also wanted to seal the hole through the gearbox cover. The car has always smelt quite oily with the soft top on, and I felt the lack of seal around the gear lever was a big contributor. I had a look around ebay for a gear lever gaiter that was relatively cheap, and may fit. I decided on one from an MX5, which at about £15 was cheap enough to throw away if it didn’t work.

The MX5 gaiter is quite large with flat areas surrounding the bellows - unfortunately if I fitted the whole thing the carpet would not have sat correctly around it, so I cut the bellows section from the gaiter. To avoid a large lump under the carpet I also fitted the bellows upside down. I made a ring from think plastic to screw down through the gaiter on to the gearbox cover, and the gear lever end is exactly the correct size for the BMW lever.

[rknowles74]

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 beginner with the lathe so the results were not perfect

I cut a flat top on the ball for a gear shift pattern sticker; Cut a step at the bottom and drilled for a grub screw to attach the ball to the lever; and filed, sanded and polished the outside to get a nice surface. The hole in the ball was larger than the lever rod, so I got some poly bush material (polyurethane) and made a bush of the correct size so the knob was a tight push fit onto the lever.

Its now hard to move the knob on the lever, and the grub screw prevents any movement anyway.