Nostalgia XK120 build

[rknowles74]

The third and final part of the build is to fit the wiring, lights, all sorts of brackets, chrome work, and all the ancillaries around the engine. I worked through the build manual in the order it was written, but there is no real need to follow that order. I found this part of the build the easiest, but also one of the longest.

I did not fit the windscreen completely. I was missing the nut which mounts the central windscreen pillar, and that pillar sets the angle that the side pillars have to be mounted at. Without the central pillar mounted firmly I was not confident of mounting the side pillars at the correct angle, so left the whole thing to Nostalgia to do. Without the windscreen in place I was also not confident of the precise location of the holes in the body for the windscreen wipers or demister vents, so left those for the factory too.

[rknowles74]

Of this stage, the most time consuming aspect was working out exactly where and how to fit all the necessary components into the engine bay. The XJS engine bay is nice and square, so there is plenty of space for all the parts. The XK engine bay is much narrower at the front than the back, meaning the radiator, air filter and inner wings all want to be in the same place.

The radiator itself was also a bit of a challenge to fit. It slopes back at the top of the radiator, and the AJ6 engine is quite long. This means that the gap between the radiator and the engine is very small. Nostalgia had told me that the IVA test was tightening up on radiator hoses rubbing on the engine, which many existing cars have. To get around this I took the radiator Nostalgia provided to a local radiator shop and had them modify it. I asked for 90degree angles to be put onto the top and bottom hose inlets – the bottom one angled to vertical, and the top one angled horizontally towards the water pump. This gave the top and bottom hoses a slightly less tortuous run. The hoses themselves I had to kludge together from a variety of XJS, XJ6 and 90 degree bends. Its not very pretty but it seems to work. I believe that the factory have since changed the radiator top hose to the other side, and fit it by turning the engine outlet around.

The other thing I had done to the radiator was to fit a drain tap. After fighting with it too many times trying to fit it I decided that once it was in the car I didn’t want to have to play with the bottom hose in order to drain the coolant.

Other parts I had to figure out how to mount included the horns

And the heater and electrics in the cockpit

[rknowles74]

The front inner wings were interesting to make, especially on the passenger side where the air filter was taking up quite a lot of space in the wheel arch. As you can see, my metal bashing skills are not particularly good – I tried using a hammer, but ended up using brute force and my knee. Once it was all painted black and the wheel was on its very hard to see anyway.

I also made up a temporary dashboard so I could get the cockpit electrics run and mounted properly. This included making up a a sub-loom to join the instruments to the main loom. When finally testing the electrics I did find a few ‘gotcha’s’. The indicators kept intermittently blowing fuses. This turned out to be that I had switched around the live and neutral wires in the connector – because the rear indicator light cables used a stripe on the neutral cable, but the nostalgia loom uses the stripe on the positive (I think). That meant I had 12V wired up to the indicator body, which when bolted up tight to the mounting bracket was connected straight to the chassis – which was the –ve earth. That actually took a long time to find.

I also never discovered why the windscreen wipers refused to function at all. The main suspect is the stalk switch, although that was brand new. Ive left that one for Nostalgia to resolve.

[rknowles74]

Around 3 years after starting to take apart the XJS I had the XK120 loaded up onto a car transporter for its journey down to Nostalgia. The factory are doing the interior upholstery, the paintwork, and securing the all important IVA test for me, all I have had to do it select the paint colour, and the interior colour.

Well, not quite all – after 3 years of working on the car the house needs decorating.
Im looking forward to the day I can go down to the factory and collect the completed car, and hopefully drive it home.

[J44EAG]

Good job, my friend. I wish you all the best.

Thanks for sharing this with us. I contracted to Nostalga for a few weeks so know the issues you have had to overcome.

Looking forward to seeing more images when you get the car back. When finished you will have a car that is almost indistinguishable from the metal job. Indeed I know of several owners who have entered classic car shows with their cars and then told the organisers that it is a reproduction! The last laugh,eh?

Mike K

[lowebird]

A brilliant job, very well done. I hope you get many years of pleasure from all your efforts. I hope we will all get to see the finished car here on this site.

Reg

[NATONEIL]

Great Job Well done. I look forward to seeing it painted and on the road.
Remember nobody will understand it as well as you do. Now is the time to finish your thoughts and improve the instruction manual.

[rknowles74]

Hi,

Thanks for the comments again.
I still need to write up a post on the work Nostalgia had to do to prepare the car for paint. Not all my work was of the best quality.

I have not seen it in the flesh, but the car is painted already and should be back from trimming soon too. As a teaser it has changed from grey fibreglass to this.

colour teaser.jpg (23.01KiB)Viewed 8687 times

It is a Jaguar colour (from Mark II I think), but we chose it as it matches the skirt my wife was wearing at the time.


Richard

[lowebird]

Of all the things you could have chosen, what better than your dear wife's skirt. I feel many brownie points will have been earned.

Reg

[rknowles74]

I have a few days off work this week so I went to see the car at Nostalgia - the first time I have seen it since I put it on the back of the truck. Seeing the car prompted me to bring this story up to date.

Im sure I mentioned that I stopped doing anything to the body after making a mess of fitting the drivers side door. I trimmed the door to length, and then tightened up the rear body, which of course pulled the rear wing backwards, leaving a very large gap between the door and wing.

The first thing nostalgia had to do was fix my mistake. They did this by adding new fibreglass to the trailing edge of the door skin.

Once the new material was filled and smoothed the gaps looked much better.

They also made a start on the dashboard and centre console.
Ideally I would not have had a centre console, but the heater hangs under the dash, and so would be visible without the console. I believe that earlier kits used a different heater that sat in the engine bay, however that has its own complexities with routing the air ducts through the firewall.

[rknowles74]

The next thing Nostalgia discovered I had done wrong was to fit the passenger side rear wing too close in to the body. It turns out I had fitted in too tight to the rear tub, meaning that when looking down from the top you could see some of the tyre. This looked wrong (because the side of the car is meant to be dead straight, but mine curved in towards the back), but is also an IVA failure as the wheels and tyres need to be inside the body.

They took the wing off, and mounted it in the right place. It turns out I had mounted it a good 2 inches too tight it to the tub. The picture shows the wing after it has been repositioned. The pen line was drawn along the piping from where I had it positioned.

I am blaming my mistake on having the car on 4 space saver wheels while building it, which came no where near filling the arches since they are so narrow. That, and the fact it was the side of the car against the wall of my garage so harder to see than the other side.

Surprisingly I had not made any other significant mistakes. That meant the rest of the work was fairly normal, if pretty involved from the pictures I was sent. As you can imagine with a fibreglass car, there is a huge amount of work in the prep and painting, not to mention making the hood frame fit. The pictures dont really do it justice.

[rknowles74]

Of course the car didnt stay in primer. It soon turned into this colour

Which brings us up to date. The car is currently waiting prep for IVA, which is booked for a few weeks time. Then I will be at the mercy of the DVLA to get it registered. I just hope I dont miss the summer.

I really enjoyed the build. If anything I have found the time since the car went down to Nostalgia the most frustrating - because there was nothing I could do. Waiting for the IVA test date was also frustrating, and I couldnt even get on the phone to check on progress because Heather and Matthew knew no more than me.

[rknowles74]

Three months since my last post and I still have not driven the car - however that is now my own fault.

The IVA was passed on the second attempt, after one of the brakes was found not to be efficient enough.
Then I had a wait for the DVLA to issue a registration number. That took about a month, but at least a week of that was waiting for me to return a missed bit of paper work to the DVLA.

So now the car is registered and insured, and I find that I don't have any time free to go to Nostalgia and collect it!

The good side of this is that I am really looking forward to the Goodwood Revival this year as the car should be on the Nostalgia stand, and I should be driving it home at the end of the weekend. Ill post some pictures once Ive seen it myself, just to end this story.

[NATONEIL]

Well done that man

[lowebird]

As Neil said, "Well done that man" A credit to you and after 3 years of sweat, blood and tears you deserve to have years of fun.
I must say that in going back through your posts I am totally convinced that I would have neither the time, patience nor skills to do what you have------ Brilliant !!

Reg