FINALLY SOME MAJOR PROGRESS: this poor kitty has been sitting in the garage waiting til now. The motor has been pulled out for a rebuild and a bit of dressing up. I hope to be back and running before this time next year! That shouldn't be too hard.

My kats chilling. The powerhouse 350 powered '94 and the stock 4.0L v8 '98 XJ8

This is the start of a project that shouldn't have been a major project. We weren't told when we bought this car that it had been under water and that has effected a lot of things that shouldn't have gone out for a while. When we got her she didn't have a working radio and the starter was going bad. Speaking of the starter did I mention that it has a 1990 Iroc Camaro 350 small block in it! It is a super nice engine, TPI and all the chrome parts. Now the radio is playing around with two 6 1/2in Xplods in the front and stock speakers in the rear (the stocks have a lot of bass). The radio is a Kenwood MP232.

So far we have taken the interior out and gotten most of that underwater stink (mold or something like that) out of it.
We took out all of the carpet and seats to boot and believe it or not they (I'm not exactly sure who they is though) took out two plugs to drain out water and never put them back in. Thanks to junkyardbeauties for all the help he has put in, we wouldn't have gotten half the work we have gotten done so far without him.

Last sunday (10/29/06) we took out the jag for a quick trip to auto zone to get the alternator tested because we have been having some starting malfunctions and the headlights are dimming and brightening quite a bit. The guy tested it, and his conclusion was that it was even hooked up. So we decided that we would take it home incase today, the day we figured out that the alternator wasn't working, would be the day that she would give up on us even though we had driven it for many days. Well, that day was the day that the jag decided to be temperamental. We made it from auto zone to the pilot station about 2 miles away....

Thank god for triple A! We had a very good driver pick up the car about 30 minutes later and take us home.
After she was put away in the shop, we took off the alternator an tested all the wire running to it. They were all correct so our reasoning is that there is something unusually wrong with the alternator or the wiring was not attached to it correctly.
Actually, taking off the alternator and putting it back on, we corrected our gauge issue. I don't know if everything else works like it should now, but the gauges sure do.

The gauge problem is SOLVED! One of our major issues was with the gauges and the alternator. It was all tied together into one system some how and that was causing both pieces to malfunction. After a lot of dicking around we finally broke down and took it to a mechanic. Two hours of thinking and three hours work he fixed both problems in an extreme fit of genius-ness. That may not be a word, but this is a time that calls for made-up words. A connector on the alternator was bad and needed to be replaced and a ground on the block was not connected properly, once both had been fixed everything went back into perfect working condition. An interesting factoid about a 1994 jaguar: The alternator wiring runs through the gauge first. So if you have problems with the alternator you will most likely have problems with the guages. The line coming from your battery goes to the voltometer in the dash then to alternator. Most vehicles will have it run a little differently, usely from the alternator to the gauge is it's own little wire. Thank you jaguar for once again proving that something easy can be extremely complicated by European engineers.
If you look close you can see that the wiring wasn't exactly done right in the first place

Just this month, December, we discovered a leak in the oil pan. We, luckily, still had her sitting over at the mechanics. So we had him remove the old pan and we were off to have it fixed. Of course, being the bargain hunters that we are, looked around for cheap quick ways to have the pan fixed up and working properly. That turned out to be a terrible idea, because the guy we had re-weld the pan is a big drinker apparently and the pan shows it. Which means that we had to buy a new pan and modify it. I think I could have made an attempt at welding it myself, but this a pretty important peice to my car and I don't want to deal with it more than I have to. We made some trips around to the local hot rod shops to finally be directed to this lovely fabricator behind a used car lot. He took our new pan, cut and welded it into prefect condition. It was about 2 days and he gave us a call saying it was done. Before we left I grabbed about $200 expecting a BIG bill from this fancy pants fabricator. Well, it turns out he's a friendly fancy pants fabricator who did the job for only $45. He is a great guy, drives a '34 Ford as his daily driver, restores it every 60k, awesome fabricator, if anyone in Knoxville ever needs to have some good custom work done you will have to get a hold of this guy. I'll post his location when I find his business card, somewhere in the mess of papers around here. After it was all welded we took the pan over to the local body shop and had it painted. They happened to be painting silver that day and, as a Christmas gift of sorts, he did it for free. Primed, painted and cleared, it's got to be one of the slickest looking pans around. Check out the pictures below:

I was viewing some of the many different cars on cardomain.com when I had a fun little idea. I'm sure you all have seen the ad for Castrol motor oil on Cardomain with the little r/c car running around well, I like Rockstar energy drink and I do some work with flash, that's the stuff that they make the games out of, and I made my own little ad.
Check out my Rockstar ad

For anyone who has a 350 jag from 88 up you know about the tach wiring issue. For those of you who don't, which is most of you, the wiring on an 88 and newer Jaguar for the tachometer is rather complicated because it is run through computers and it is not really worth correcting. Now that most of the other problems are finally out of the way, we took a jag instrument cluster over to a local hot rod shop, racing innovations, to have them try and install an aftermarket tach mechanism and keep the stock appearance. It should be an interesting process.

Well we got the pan finally installed, but some how or another the mechanic we had instal it didn't quite do it right so it went home took a leak on the floor and went back into the mechanic's. It is still comming from the oil pan so we are thinking that something wasn't installed properly.

If you have any car knowledge you can see that the flywheel cover is missing and we are trying to find one to put on, but it may have to be modified as well. There is oil on the back of the pan, if you try the image on the left you might be able to see it. The left image is mammoth in size. We were extremely upset to have it home just to see it still leaking, it was leaking less than before so that is why we were thinking that it was just something he did wrong. I'll find out this weekend (1/12/07-1/15/07)

I've got more pictures to post, but my computer has taken a crap..actually it is totally completely full. I'll eventually have more pictures once I get myself an Acer Ferrari 4005!

My latest toy to be playing with should arrive soon. The Acer Ferrari 4006, it's more than tripple what I've got on my laptop right now, hard drvie size that is. Also, there is more RAM...I'm going crazy waiting for it to get here.

My new laptop is finally here so I can actually update my cardomain page again. I left the camera with all my pics on it at home, so I will have to wait until tomorrow (1/28/06) to show off my model car resto and a few other little things.

The jag has been in the shop for a while now getting some little things fixed. Turns out that the oil pan was still leaking because of the way that the TPI engine is set up and the way the oil pan gasket was made. On a TPI engine there is a prong that sticks out and goes through the oil pan to attach it and when it does that it doesn't mesh with the gasket quite right. So the mechanic did a little modding to it and it fits perfect and doesn't leak. Also, the brake lights have gone out due to some electrical malfunction when we were cleaning up the trunk. We are going to head over to the junkyard and see if the little brake light box is still on the jag there and if it is in working condition.

It's all back home and working! All my lights and none of the leaks are there. I am planning on taking it out some time this weekend and putting it through a good proper test run. I'll try to get some good pictures and a video or two of it out on the street.

It's all back home, but it is far from working. It was burning oil and it was starting to get worse. Then finally the oil pump went out and since I had to drive it home, little under 5 miles, it got screwed up past the point of rescue. So I am looking into getting a new 350 block and transfering all the nice shiny parts from the old block to the new. Hopefully all will turn out well. I'll try to get some pictures when the motor is out too!
Bought a donor car! A 1993 Z28 with 71,000 miles on it. Will throw some pics of it up here once it has made it back from the junk yard. It is wrecked in the front, but the rest is good. If anyone is interested in anything but the motor out of this Z28 then drop me a line. There is a six speed tranny in it!

(6/13)My poor little jag has been taking a long sit next to the camaro as I wait for some cash to come in from sales of the other 13 we have. I'll keep you updated!

Nov 9th! A good day today it is! I have the cougar and the mustang sold! That means the money for the Jag is more than there. In fact, so there that it might be a 383 by the time I'm finished! Can't wait to get her torn down and back running right

the car that should help get my cat back on the road. If anyone is interested in interior parts or from essentially the front clip back its for sale. Air bags are gone, but its great interior otherwise. 6 speed manual tranny too. If you're interested in parts give me a yell.

Thanks everyone for rating my jag. I've kept up with what my jag has been the best of and so far its top jag performance mod, top XJ sedan, top jag, top performance mod overall, and, my favorite, top overall of ALL of cardomain (for now, 12/30/06). Thank you all again, please keep rating me up and I'll do the same to you. Next thing I'm going for is show off of the week!

Page 1: Intro/updates
Page 2: Exterior
Page 3: Interior
Page 4: What's Been Done
Page 5: What's to be Done
Page 6: Wish List
Page 7: Where's it all kept?
Page 8: Animations and photoshops