Gearing is always a nightmare. Had a chat to a guy in a local pub car park yesterday evening. He had bought that day a beautiful black 56 plate Ferarri 599 same day. 14K on clock but had developed a fault with what the RAC bloke who was playing about with defined as a gearbox differential problem. Ralph tells me gearbox and differential are in no way related so not sure what was up with it.

Not a good start and another guy I was briefly when I went out for a 2nd look and chatting to afterwards said his son worked for a Ferarri dealership in Cardiff, and reckoned it would cost 25K to sort the problem.

Owner was a really lovely person, got the impression he wasnt local though as seemed suprised when the RAC guy told him the £250K new price would buy a decent house in these parts. I added yes probably get a reasonable 4 bed detached round her for that money. He didnt say how much he had payed for the car, which I understand had been parked up for a fair while. I wonder why!!!!!  

I think the RAC man and Per are right:

XjRestorations wrote on 08.11.2011 at 07:26:08:


I dug a bit deeper and the general feeling is that 400HP is about it for the HE. Nothing about torque though. But your description indicates "enough". And if the basic combustion chamber is kept unchanged the dawdling consumption should still be good. Charging hard there is little to choose between them consumptionwise according to my figures. (Can't find the notes though.)

If the engine turns out to be a complete mess when opened I think a HE is on the cards. Then sequential injection and wasted spark. That plus a manual 5-speed should see me into the  high 20'ies on longer trips. (The best I have ever seen in the XJ-S on one pussyfooting trip is 23mpg but most of the time 20mpg has been relaxed touring mileage in speed restricted Norway.)
Per

Per wrote on 14.01.2012 at 23:00:16:


Per: rethink this: put a manual box in your Interceptor. That'd be much more interesting.

And get some genuine split rims on the Jag. . .

But what about a manual-gearbox FF? Now that would be something!

By the way I wasn't really implying your wheels were not genuine, it was just,

. . . that you said they were . . .  forged. . .

Time to report on progress or rather lack thereof. Too many other projects ongoing. Interceptor ready for painting, but oh what bodges I found (including one of my own making in the mid 80'ies    ). Jensen Healey gearbox rebuild incl. use of some used parts and retaining some possibly dodgy parts resulted in some degree of jumping out of second even now. So next on that front is a 5-speed conversion.  BUT, tomorrow I start swapping in the V12 I bought (and checked out). Things take so much time I decided to retain the BW65 for now in order to be able to drive the XJC again. Then I'll decide upon opening up if the old block is salvagable. Either way I will use it as a dummy for preparing the 5-speed conversion for the XJC, after the JH conversion is done.

Per, we need photographs, you've got so many interesting things going on!