My XJ40 has been amazingly reliable – it really never goes wrong!
     
For rust on the other hand it rivals Roly’s Majestic! At the risk of knocking Roly’s Majestic from the number one spot on Google for the search “Jaguar XJ40 Bulkhead rust”, here are a few pictures of the bodywork!!!

I took it to a few body shops but surprisingly most didn’t want to touch the car - or their plan for it was basically bodging and wouldn’t last.
Eventually I stumbled across Autofusion-uk, on the  RetroRides forum http://www.autofusion-uk.co.uk/ I liked the look of their work, and they are close to me (in Leigh Lancs. – I am in Cheshire) so I went to visit. They were working on a ‘Seventies Alpina at the time and the work they did on that was excellent, leaving the car looking like it had never needed any repairs.

Here it is in the body shop. Both front wings are off and the dreaded inner wings are rusty – mine is probably worse than average, but rust here is typical of the later XJ40s. Again, I hope there are not too many photos.







Here is what greeted me when I went to see my car.

Right hand side: this is typical inner wing rust on the late XJ40. Water leaks in here and ends up on the front foot well floor. Lots of XJ40s have the luxury of a built in foot spa, though my car has strangely dry foot wells – completely dry even after driving through a thunderstorm, or leaving the car parked in the rain for a couple of days.






It’s all properly crusty and flaky here and very weak. I kept a rust flake as a souvenir – it’s surprisingly heavy for a Bran flake.




On to the passenger’s side (RHD car) - slightly better?





It’s still very crusty this side though...




Luckily, this is the only rust in this part of the car, and forward of this the body is still in good condition. Jaguar made a rather half hearted attempt at rust proofing though and the only paint on here is undercoat. I wonder if the lack of paint is the reason why some XJ40s rust so badly under the front wings?



I wish I had Dinitroled it years ago…

The bulkhead is another late XJ40 weakness, but is in good condition on my car.

Right side:


And the left:


The front door pillar on the driver’s side worried me. It had a significant area of rust, which had holed. I haven’t seen this on any other XJ40, so I feared it could be symptom of some unknown horrors lying within.

Luck was on my side – the rust was in the outer skin only, the inside of the pillar is as it came from the factory. Water leaking in from above saturated a square black foam insert, causing the pillar to rust out on the outer skin. All other areas of the pillar are rust free, unaffected and in the original Jaguar paint. All the rust was cut out.



New metal was fabricated and tacked into place, then welded:







The door pillar fits the wing and sill evenly down its length, with no variation of the gap. I'm hoping the repair will be invisible when it is painted.

The scuttle worried me. The top panel of the plenum was very rusty – to the point of brittleness – on both sides. Very little pressure was needed to hole them.





I poked my finger down the hole here and felt the rust flakes give way down below. Not good. The area will need to be opened up to find out what is going on in there.

Strangely both foot wells on my car were always dry, but it could be that it was never exposed to enough water to fully saturate the soundproofing, then run down into the car. If it had been parked in the rain for a few days, then maybe I would have had duck pond foot wells too.



The same place without the front wing:



The top scuttle panel has now been removed, revealing the inside of the bulkhead, which, I am relieved to say, is in excellent rust free condition. The brown staining is dust sitting on the metal and on top of the seam sealer. It can be brushed off easily to reveal bright paintwork.



The top of the right hand end piece of the scuttle panel. This is made from very thin metal, unlike the bulkhead below which is of much heavier grade.



The underside of the same piece of metal. Water has got into this small rectangular compartment then been held there by what remains of the cavity’s foam filling. The foam was described as a rancid gelatinous slime. Water condensing on the underside of the top panel has rotted through the metal over time.



However, the top panel is the extent of the rust. Despite the brown look on the photograph, the ‘compartment’ floor and sides are not rusty. The discolouration is a mixture of rust flakes and dust. The crunching sensation must have been my finger compressing the flaked remains of the top panel which had dropped through into the cavity. Some of the rust was close in texture to soil.

Overview of the inside of the bulkhead cavity, now the scuttle top panel has been removed:



Closer in:





The whole interior of the plenum is in excellent condition – again the brown areas are only dust.



Photographed from the rear – there is a small area of rust where the bulkhead front meets the inner wing, but nothing more:



The whole cavity viewed from the right hand side – no rust there:



The small area of surface rust is the extent of it:





The left hand side was in similar condition, but cleaner since the top panel was not so bad on this side.

Viewed from above:



Here I have brushed away some of the dust to reveal clean metal. The area will need to be thoroughly vacuumed.






And from the side across the plenum cavity from the left hand side (before the area was brushed clear of dust – it looks like rust in the photo, but isn’t!





Again the whole structure is rust free:



Clearly on my car water was not getting into the car from the bulkhead. Water getting into the car must have drained into the door pillars. It could explain why the cabin of mine remained dry, even though the car looked so rusty.

The corners of the plenum are a complex, triple skinned structure. Though I didn’t take any photos of the right hand side, it was reconstructed in the same way as Jaguar’s original three skin build. Some work has started on the left hand side, which had similar problems to the right: