Teenage dream realised

Thursday 16th June 2022

In 1961 the new E-Type Jaguar was announced. My job entailed maintaining relationships with the motor trade in my area persuading them to use our finance services for customers needing instalment payments.

One of my dealers was Francis E Cox, Jaguar agents located in Keighley, Yorkshire. Peter (can't remember surname) was the sales manger and he proudly showed me the newly arrived model. I showed so much enthusiasm he took me for a drive. That car was ahead of its time in body design and combined with the luxurious leather and walnut dashboard with classic black and white circular instruments it was an unattainable dream for an impecunious young man but...

...now I have one! Albeit in plastic bits and first steps of building the engine are complete.

Box art

All the parts are on sprues. They are cut off, primed,  painted and assembled

The basic parts of the engine. There are already four parts put together in that main engine block. The cylinder head is not seen here. The timing cover, exhaust manifold, coil, distributor and sump are shown, there are other bits to go on as well. These parts have been primed and painted.

The ignition leads from plugs to distributor and coil were not included in the kit and I have made my own. Here the leads made from very thin insulated wire are glued to the tiny distributor stuck on some BlueTack on top of a bottle lid. Assembled as such they will then be put in place in the engine block and the leads trimmed and fitted into the plug locations on the cylinder head. This has been an exploration of the possible for me and I was not sure if I could achieve it, but see the results below

Lighting for macro photography is not as strong a skill for me as fiddling about with tiny bits of plastic and glue but I am well pleased with the results. Bear in mind these photos enlarge imperfections, but the real life unit looks pretty well pristine. Note the black lead going to the coil. 

There has been some nerdish debate about getting the leads on the distributor in the correct firing order but for me that would have been a step too far. The wire I used is a bit large for scale, but I just couldn't find anything thinner.

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Number Ten Update

I am trying to avoid politics here but the news that Blondie has HAD an Ethics Advisor is unbelievable. My instant reaction was that it must be April 1st, and then I imagined a Monty Python sketch with John Cleese playing the role of a mythical Ethics Advisor.