The normal front and back movement didn’t work at all.  The height adjustment lever on the side of the seat worked, but it only did so much.  I still could hardly drive the car in that position.  Not much good owning a car if you can’t sit in it or drive it.

Even with somebody else pulling from the rear, the seat wasn’t going to move.  There isn’t a lot of room but I was able to see how the mechanism worked.   The tracks on both sides have teeth and the seat can only move when the fingers retract.  The lever is on the inner side of the seat.   It directly pushes on the mechanism on that side to move the fingers.   It is then connected to a bar further back which rotates and moves a lever on the other side that moves the fingers there.  I could see how it worked, and the fingers were moving, but it didn’t seem like enough.  It seemed to be worse on the inner side, which was odd since that side is actuated directly by the lever.

Comparing to the passengers seat, that mechanism seemed to move more.  I tried to use various screwdrivers and pry tools to make the fingers move more.  I was able to get them move more, but the seat didn’t want to budge. Since the seat wouldn’t move, I couldn’t take it out either.

I posted about my problem on the W124 facebook group.  I had a few useful replies, but more helpfully a friend from the Mercedes club saw my post and called me offering to help.  That was very much appreciated and so today I went over to him to look at the car.   He also had a spare W124 seat on the bench that we could compare to.

We spent quite a lot of time trying to make the seat move, using the other seat to compare to.   Given our lack of success, it became apparent that the seat was going to have to come out.  Since it was already quite far forward, we could get the rear bolts out pretty easily.   It took quite a lot of effort to finally get the seat to move back so we could remove the front bolts.

Once the seat was out, it was immediately apparent why it was jammed.  The metal had broken at the end of lever right near the pivot point.  That meant when you pull the lever, instead of pivoting, it was just moving away from the seat mechanism. That meant the fingers could never move enough.

Luckily, my friend was able to weld it up for me.    As soon as it was welded, immediately the mechanism was working as it should have been.  While the seat was out, we also lubricated the tracks.  With the mechanism welded, and the tracks lubricated, the seat moved really well.

Getting the seat back in was pretty straightforward, although we found it was much easier to start with the rear bolts.   With the track working and lubricated, it was quite easy to get the seat back in.   It was great to have some help for this.  I never would have been able to repair it on my own.

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That was quite concerning.  Being an all-alloy engine, the Jaguar V12 does not respond well to being overheated.   When I brought the car to the workshop, it was quite apparent that it was coming from the water pump.  The Jaguar V12 holds a lot of coolant (~20 litres), but its still better not to loose it like that.

It looked like the seal had failed and after shutting down the car, without circulation, the coolant was being ejected through the water pump seal.

When I first got the car, the water pump was one of the items replaced, so I was a bit puzzled why it could fail like it did.  On the other hand I was pleased it wasn’t a more serious problem like a head gasket.

Doing some more research, it looks like it is due to water pump availability.   For the Series 1 XJ12, most of the parts manufacturers list a rebuilt pump or a repair kit.   So this is what my car got.  Unfortunately the rebuilt pump didn’t last long.  Apparently you can get new aftermarket pumps for later cars, I presume for the HE.   From what I can tell, these normally had a double row pully, but you can order a single row, which is what my car has.

Based on all that, we put on a new aftermarket pump.   My mechanic tells me that he rarely needs to replace them, so the new one should last a lot longer.   To do the job, a fair amount of stuff needs to come off the engine, but the job can be done with the radiator in situ.

At the same time they replaced one of the tensioners with a second hand unit as the bearing in the pully was a bit noisy.   The electric fan was also rubbing the shroud so they adjusted the bracket.

The result is no more pools of coolant underneath the car when I drive it.   The engine runs pretty cool.   I verified this with an infrared thermometer.

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In prior years I’ve often attended the big car show in Berry.  That was always quite a good event, but the location means it seems to be cancelled due to weather as much as is actually held.  The last time I was able to attend was 2023.

This year I attended the event at the event at the Australian Motorlife Museum.   The Illawarra section of the Jaguar club were also there so I could have gone with them too.   I’ve been to the museum a few times before and it is always well worth the visit.   The last time was also in 2023.

As well as the trip to the museum, the event also included a scenic drive to the Museum.  The meeting point was at Partridge VC rest area.   I took my 1987 Mercedes 560SEL.  I chose the 560SEL for two reasons.  Firstly, the forecast was for rain and the W126 is very stable in the wet.   Secondly, I had recently had the intake manifold gaskets replaced and this would be my first decent drive in the car since that job was done.

This all sounded good on paper, but there was a small problem.  The club hadn’t actually picked a route or nominated anyone to lead the drive from the rest area to the museum.  After waiting about 30 minutes, we realized nobody was coming. We set our GPSs to the museum and just headed there.   At least it wasn’t raining at the time.

While I have been to the museum 3-4 times, I had never been on event day before.   Going on an event day meant they had a number of the cars running and driving around.   There was a replica of the Benz Patent Motorwagon from 1986, a car from 1901 and another that I think was from the nineteen teens.   We actually passed the latter on the way to the museum on the motorway.   It was getting along rather nicely.

One thing I learned was that most of the cars from the 19th century didn’t have brakes.  I had assumed they would also have rudimentary rear wheel only brakes.  But apparently they didn’t.   I wouldn’t want to ride a pushbike without brakes, let alone a car – no matter how slow.

The museum even had a steam car on display from 1901 with no brakes that was used until about 25 years ago.   Apparently driven to a church service each week.   I can’t fathom driving on the public roads in 2001 with no brakes at all, even if the church was close by to the owners residence

As well as the cars that were driving around, they had a nice display of club pre-war cars just outside the entrance. For example a bevvy of Austin 7’s parked outside.  Going to the museum on a day like this was worth it and an extra benefit from the normal way of attending the museum.

Inside the collection was good as always – focusing mostly on pre-war cars.   The collection does change from time to time, so while many cars were the same as from my last visit, there were a few changes.

My two favourite cars were the Minerva and the Black and Red Auburn.   The Auburn actually has an interior made from pigskin and during the restoration the owner had the pigskin tanned.  Apparently this wasn’t that easy to have done.

Cars from this era were painted with a brush. I found out that the way to get a good finish is to heat the paint as it means the brush stroke are not all that visible when it cools.  I had just assumed it was done with lots of wet sanding.

For this event, I took my 11 year old daughter who enjoyed seeing some of the really old cars, as well as seeing some of the memorabilia they had on display.   This included automotive stuff as well as other things like typewriters and sewing machines.

it was a good day overall, the car went well and we enjoyed visiting the museum.

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The next step was to run a coolant pressure test, so I bought a cheap kit from Temu and ran it.  It was pretty easy to get coolant to leak, from that same location.   Looking from under the car, it looked it was running down the side of the engine block.   I wasn’t sure the exact location – perhaps a core plug or something like that?

I took the car into my mechanic for him to look further and he came back that the leak was from the intake manifold.  The coolant would leak out in the valley of the V8 and then pool in there, and then slowly run down the side of the engine block.

I didn’t want to drive the car much like that.  Overheating an alloy engine is a good way of destroying it.  While the leak wasn’t huge, it could get worse.   So late last year, I parked the car up and started to order the parts.

While the leak was coming from the main gaskets between the intake manifold and the heads, there are a lot of other parts that should be replaced at the same time. Consulting the EPC, I came up with the following list:

• 117 141 2480 – Left Side Intake Gasket – Genuine NLA, Victor Reinz
• 117 141 2580 – Right Side Intake Gasket – as above
• 117 140 0265 x8 – Rubber sealing rings, Genuine
• 126 430 2029 – Rubber vacuum line – I couldn’t find this in the end
• 116 090 0882 – Idle Air hose – Genuine
• 116 997 1286 x4 – Plug for air distribution hose, MTC
• 102 094 0212 – Cap for air hose – Genuine
• 117 990 1278 – Air line
• 116 094 2582 x2 – Air distribution hose – Genuine
• 000 000 001448 x2 – Bolt
• 000 912 008066 x3 – Bolt
• 000 912 008063 x10 – Bolt
• 000 912 008060 x4 – Bolt – couldn’t locate this one
• 117 094 0982 – Hose
• 116 140 0618 – Air flow boot, genuine

Not that is is my list, I would not take this as the definitive guide.

My mechanic suggested that it was better to get new bolts, if I could. I was able to get most of them.  I wasn’t sure if he would need the air flow boot, but I got one because they are still available new.  It seemed like a good thing to have on hand even if he didn’t need it.

It was a while before we could get the car scheduled, so I hardly drove it while I waited to the job, just the odd short trip to keep things going.

I bought the car from the original owner, and he didn’t think the heads had ever been off.  This seemed to be the case looking at how the intake manifold came off.  Not bad after almost 350,000km.   In my case, the reason we did the job was coolant, but this job is commonly also done due to vacuum leaks due to the rubber sealing rings.

There were no real issues with the job, and it was clear where the coolant had been leaking from the old gaskets.

The car is now back and driving very well again. Its possible there were minor vacuum leaks from the old parts, although I wasn’t aware of any.

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• Voltage
• Oil Pressure
• Water Temperature
• Fuel

They had all stopped working and I wanted to get them to work again, especially the water temperature one.   I quickly ruled out a blown fuse, as many other things in the car that share a fuse with these gauges were working.

My next suspicion was that the voltage stabilizer had stopped working.  Most of these smiths gauges run off 10 volts instead of 12, and voltage stabilizer converts from 12 to 10.  I’m not exactly sure the reason for this, but If I had to guess its because they require the voltage to be consistent and normally voltage levels in a car range from 12-14 volts.  I ordered one.

I also purchased the Jaguar XJ wiring diagram book and on examining the diagrams, it quickly became apparent that it probably wasn’t the voltage stabilizer.   The voltage gauge needs the raw voltage in order to work, and it was also dead.

Illumination was working when the headlights were switched on, so it also seemed unlikely a problem with a bad ground.   This made me suspect a problem with the power feed into this gauge pod.

Looking at what is going on is quite easy on a series 1.  The panel with the gauges is hinged and folds down to reveal the fuse boxes.   This was a design used on the Mark 2, The E-Types, S-Type, Series 1 XJ and probably the Mark X.

Instead of using wires for each gauge like in a series 1 E-Type, there is a flexible printed circuit board behind all four gauges and the clock.  This was quite an advanced design in 1968.  I doubt the people who designed it were thinking about it being in service 50 years later.   The gauges are not especially complex and simple wires would be easier!

My next theory was that there was an issue with this circuit board.   That proved to be the case.  Inspecting it carefully, the track that takes the main power feed had burned up and so therefore power was not getting to the gauge set.   The photo below shows the burned track in the mirror.

The fuse that controls the gauges plus many other things is a 35A fuse, so the tracks on this board are more sensitive than the fuse is.  I suspect I caused the problem as I had been using a multimeter to see where the aftermarket radio was wired into the fuse box the day before. At the time, I probably touched something and cause a small short, and since the fuse is so large, burned on the tracks in the circuit board.

I thought quite a bit about options.  I don’t have the skill level to repair the circuit board.   However, I realized I could inject 12v to the line that came from the circuit board to the voltage stabilizer.  This would be completely reversable if I ever got another board, and quite simple.  They way the plug to the board worked, I could push a spade connector into the back of the plug where the main power feed was, and piggyback it to the line to the stabilizer.  This would both power the 12v circuit before the stabilizer and bypass the burned track.

This fix seems to have worked quite well, and my gauges are back to how they were before.   That is, Temperature and Oil Pressure seemingly working well.  Voltage working but reading a bit low, and petrol reading very low.

I’m not too worried about the voltage gauge, but I would like to get the petrol gauge to work properly.

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I drove up to the blue mountains via Bells Line of Road and then took the road from Oberon to Goulburn before heading back home on the motorway.

Overall the car did really well, and I found it to be very comfortable on a much longer drive.   The drive was a good mix of suburban streets, back roads and motorways.  This drive took me over 1,000km with the car, which is probably the most its has driven in less than a year since going from Melbourne to Adelaide back in 2005 as a new purchase by a previous owner.

The driving experience really is very good.  The power is effortless and I think the 3.31 rear end ratio really suits the nature of the car.   I’ve never driven one of the later HE V12s, but they had much taller ratios for fuel consumption.   The ride quality is excellent and it handles both back roads and the motorway equally well.   It started to rain, so I took it very easy around corners.

When driving the car, its easy to forget it’s well over 50 years old.  Comfort and ride are superior to a newer car.  Handling isn’t, but that’s not what this sort of car is about.  There are only a few areas that showcase the age of the car.   The first is wind noise.  The drag coefficient of the series 1 XJ isn’t all that good and there is a lot of wind noise a freeway speeds.  This doesn’t bother me a great deal, but its quite noticeable against an 80s car, and especially something modern.   I am curious if a series 3 is much different.

The next is the windscreen wipers, which are a bit average.  Glass coverage is a bit mediocre, and there are only two speeds.   The final one is the presence of quarterlight windows.  Since the A/C isn’t working, I see this as a big positive.  On a rainy day, I was able to have the quarterlight open, and get plenty of airflow with minimal water ingress.  Its a shame they died out.

The drive also identified a few things I need to sort out on the car over time:

• There is a really annoying rattle from behind the dash somewhere.  I fixed one of the a/c vents being lose, so its something else.
• I lost my gauges (volt meter, fuel, temperature, oil pressure).
• My Tachometer sometimes stops working
• I can’t get my newly installed rear view mirrors to aim correctly.
• The 2000’s era CD player is terrible and seems to work only through one speaker.
• There is no way to charge a phone on a longer trip.  I used a power bank.
• At the last fuel stop close to home, The car ejected some coolant after sitting for about 3-5 minutes.
• My wiper blades won’t wipe all that well, and while the fast speed works well, the slower speed is a bit hit and miss.  Sometimes I have to got fast speed first before going to slow.   They also don’t park perfectly.
• The kickdown doesn’t seem to work.
• I had a slightly soft brake pedal down a long steep section.

The above seems like a long list, but only a couple of them are urgent.  I filled up three times to be safe, and the consumption wasn’t too bad.   The first tank was probably a bit off from having the fuel tank replaced.  I got 16l/100km out of the second and 14.5l/100km out of the third.  Not bad given the reputation of these cars for thirst.

Ultimately I want to keep any of my cars in the condition that I could get in them and drive to Melbourne and back with no issue.  I am getting much closer to that with the Daimler, but still have work to do.

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I arrived at about 7:50AM and the lines to get in were already quite long.  Quite a few people got sick of them and parked in the spectator parking which I think is a shame to save $5.  Probably next time I’ll try to get there a bit earlier.

I took my 1977 Mercedes 450SLC.  I have been driving it this week and my son and I gave it a quick wash the day before.  A friend of mine had his almost identical car there on the day which was unplanned.

The best part of going to St Ives is seeing what interesting and unusual cars will be on display.  Today it was all about Saabs.   I don’t know if it was a event by the Saab Club or just a group of Saab enthusiasts but there were a few really nice cars.   For my mind, the best car of the whole show was the 1979 Saab 99 Turbo.

The car had been restored and it showed, even down to all the decals in the engine bay.   The car must have been such a revelation in the last 70s.  I think the original 99 design is more interesting than the later 900, down to some of the subtle curves in the bodywork and the design of the interior.  The wheels and turbo badges are also a nice touch.   The 900 is still a cool car, but it’s a bit more homogenized.

There were some other nice Saabs there including a black 900 turbo and a pale blue 900.   I prefer the Saabs from then the company was independent, but the later cars still have some interesting touches.

As well as the Saabs, there were some other cars that caught my eye including a Milan Brown 450SEL 6.9 with a cream velour interior.  Milan brown is one of those colours that has incredible depth when the paint is nice, but looks terrible when its a bit faded.  This car has great paint and it goes so well with the velour.  As well as the 6.9 there was a nice Derby Bentley, a very nice blue BMW E24 with a manual transmission.   The Volvo Bertone coupe was striking too.   These are not pretty cars, but so interesting and unusual that I was happy to see it.

In addition to the cars, its always good to run into a few friends along the way and its a great Sunday morning.

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One of the things that became apparent in starting to use the car regularly, was that the differential had a fairly major leak.  This is obviously bad for the longevity of the limited slip diff, but on the XJ series cars, the rear brakes are inboard so major leaks can impact the rear brakes.

The independent rear suspension used on the XJ and Daimler derivatives is the same independent rear suspension unit introduced on the E-Type in 1961.  It was still far ahead of everyone else when the X was introduced in 1968, and continued to be throughout the 70s and early 80s.  It was only when the competition introduced multi-link rear suspension systems in the mid 80s was it surpassed.  The original version was used until the end of XJ Series 3 production, and evolutions of the system were used until the mid 2000s.

The reason the independent rear suspension for the XJ is related to the differential is the design of system has the entire rear suspension, differential and brakes in a removable rear subframe.   Therefore to fix my differential leak, the rear suspension had to come out of the car.

On my car the exhaust system wasn’t in great condition and had to be cut before the rear suspension could come down. This will need to be replaced later. The good news is that the underside of the car is in good condition. With the rear suspension removed, the differential could then be serviced. A clunk in the rear suspension was traced to be due to bent trailing arm mount brackets.

While the car was in having the differential leak fixed, a few other things needed sorting out, including:

• Leak from transmission pan gasket
• A couple of small coolant leaks from coolant hoses
• The fan clutch was not engaging properly when the engine was hot

In addition to those things, when changing a fuel sender on the left hand tank, it was clear that the cleaning the tank a few months ago hadn’t worked very well.  The tank was still very dirty.  New fuel tanks are still available, so I was able to purchase one and have it sent directly to the workshop to be fitted.   I had feedback it looked like it was very good quality and had some kind of internal ceramic coating.

The front brakes were leaking and so the calipers removed to be rebuilt.  In doing so, it was clear that it was necessary as the pistons were in pretty rough shape.

I also had some new external rear view mirrors fitted, including one on the passengers side.  This wasn’t optioned when the car was new, but I park very close to a wall in my storage area and I don’t want to damage the side of the car.

It as a lot of work on the car, but none of these things are all that unusual for a car that was laid up for a while.

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• Soft brake pedal
• Dirty passengers side fuel tank and pitted chrome on fuel cap
• Dented rear bumper
• Tachometer not working after my attempted repair
• Fuel gauges not working properly

The soft brake pedal seemed to be resolved by cleaning up the calipers and getting the pistons moving a bit better, and then re-bleeding the brakes.    The passengers side fuel tank was a bigger job.  It had to be removed from the car, and it was clear it had been out before and been re-sealed in some way.  It was a bit rusty inside and some of that sealer was flaking off.   The tank was cleaned in acid and then put back in the car.

The drivers side was in much better shape.  Since the rear bumper comes off to get to the petrol tank, the dented section was replaced with a better one.   I also had a better chrome filler cap to replace the pitted one with.

It turned out I had done the tachometer wiring correctly.  However, there were some issues with the wiring at the back of the Tachometer which once fixed had it working properly.

During this service, it was also identified that I would need to bring the car back in the new year to address a major leak from the differential, and that one of my fuel pumps was not working properly.   I planned to replace that myself.

While the car was in, it also had an oil and filter change and other checks.

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This was also the first drive we using a new navigation app the club has purchased called ‘Tourboss’.   I was quite keen to try it as at night. I can really only see two cars behind me, so its not always clear if the group is still together or not.   The tourboss app shows me the locations of all the cars on the drive.

We had a pretty good turn out, probably a combination of the good weather and not having had one for a couple of months.  I took my 1978 450SE.   As well as my car was a C123 280CE, R107 280SL, C107 450SLC, C126 380SEC, W124 300E x2 & E320 and S124 300TE.

We had originally planned to meet on the eastern side of Galston Gorge and include that in the route.  The Gorge had been closed earlier in the year for roadworks. There was a lot of conflicting data about if it was open at night or not.   Since it wasn’t that clear, I decided not to include it.   I left a bit early to get to the drive, and found it was in fact open.

Our new starting location was outside Galston shops. From there we headed out to Cattai Ridge Road, before taking Wisemans Ferry Road up to the Old Northern Road and then the Old Northern Road back down to Dural Maccas.   This is a route we’ve done a few times before and I always really enjoy it.   There is generally not a lot of traffic at night and there is a nice mix of tight corners and faster sections.

Overall I thought the tourboss app worked reasonably well.   I used it to Navigate to the start point.  That experience was so-so as the route it took wasn’t the one I would have chosen. More importantly it lacks speed camera location information, and Sydney is bristling with them.   So in future I would probably use Waze to get to the location.

The experience for the users on our drive was pretty decent.  I set the route up in the admin portal which includes all the waypoints.  Tourboss the generates a six digit code.   That code was in our event booking system, along with details of how to get the app.   Everyone turned up with the app installed and with the code entered, so they were ready to go.

When the event is started, it then shows the location of all the other cars.  It also pre-downloads the maps, which is quite good if going through areas with poor mobile coverage.   As the ‘tour leader’ I had a few different views I could use. One as a normal navigation system and then one where it was more about showing me the location of the other cars.   Without reading glasses, I couldn’t see the actual names of the people, but that probably wasn’t important as I could see the spread of the icons.   For example, for a while two cars fell behind for a bit and then later caught up. Something I was able to see in real time.

One of the best things was that you don’t need to hit ‘continue’ when you get to a waypoint like with google.  For a pre-planned route it was pretty seamless.  On the downside, the lack of speed camera, roadworks and hazard warnings that waze gives you is a negative, as is the lack of dark mode at night.   We also had one member who has a phone with a square screen and the app couldn’t handle that.

There was also one situation where it went a bit haywire.  All of a sudden it thought a roundabout that was 7km away was actually 250 meters in front.  Then it got confused and started slowly increasing the distance to where it was.   I knew that section of road pretty well, so it was obviously nonsense, but it would have been confusing if I hadn’t.  It wasn’t just me that experienced that, and it happened on a bit of the drive where the route crossed over itself, which may have been the cause.

Overall my verdict is that the app is pretty useful for running a group driving event. In an ideal situation I would probably want two phones running, one for this and one for waze.   It will be a useful addition to our night drives.

The drive itself was great and all the cars performed well.

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