[Epic Restoration]
Dismantled and abandoned in the Seventies, this Jaguar E-type presented a clean-slate restoration opportunity for Clayton Classics – but was this possible from several boxes of rusty bits?
Words SAM DAWSON Photography STUART COLLINS
We were looking for donor cars for Jaguar E-type restorations, and this one came up for sale, in a very unfinished and dismantled state,’ explains Dean Allsop of Coventry-based Clayton Classics, referring to this now-gleaming Series 1 fixed-head coupé. ‘I negotiated and bought what was essentially a bodyshell, and boxes upon boxes of bits.’
However, Allsop had happened upon something special. ‘This 1962 car is the 252nd right-hand-drive fixed-head built,’ he notes. ‘It was sold by ex-Le Mans driver and Coventry Jaguar dealer Sam Newsome to Gulson Engineering. This Coventry firm, owned by Herbert Hayward and Albert Upham, made small-capacity internal combustion engines, including some used in early forerunners of what we’d now call karts. Then in 1967, when the car was five years old, Gulson sold it to the grandson of former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. By the mid-Seventies, the car was past its best, and MacDonald junior stripped it down, but the restoration never got started and the car remained in his garage, before one of Allsop’s contacts tracked it down.
‘Our plan was to start a rebuild, with a view to giving the car a five-speed gearbox and air conditioning, using it as a demonstrator of our services as restorers as we worked on it, until a potential owner came along and we could complete the restoration, alighting on colour and trim choices. But the immediate question was, exactly what had we bought?’
Assessing the project
‘What came to us was a bare bodyshell, with no paint on it, and evidence of some historic bodywork repairs which hadn’t been done to a particularly high standard,’ said Allsop. ‘And lots of boxes of bits, which we hoped had the rest of the car in them.
‘Bodyshell pushed to one side, we laid out all the parts from the boxes on the floor, to try to determine what we had, and if they were salvageable. It became pretty evident early on that there were some components missing, and I remember saying, “Right – we’re not buying another dismantled car again!”
‘Trim parts especially seemed to be absent. Little tricky-tofind things like the metal components that need finishing and fitting to the interior. The sun visors were missing, the centre console would need completely remaking, and the aluminium trim parts were gone, as were the doorhandles and windscreen wipers. The lights and wheels were unsalvageable, and the surviving fabric and leather trim and glass had to be thrown away.
‘Thankfully the brightwork was all intact, and just needed rechroming. The engine was still attached to its original Moss gearbox, but when we started the engine stripdown we decided to put the Moss unit back in its box. A new five-speed had already been ordered, for improved flexibility and driveability.’
Low point
Dean Allsop
Bodyshell
Although the paint had already been stripped off the bodyshell in the Seventies, making assessing its needs superficially easier to determine, it was still a daunting task, as Nick Reeves recalled. ‘It needed a complete overhaul,’ he said. ‘Including new front floor sections, toe boards, rear numberplate panels, engine frames, sill end plates and support bars, and new door drip trays – they were all too corroded to refurbish, new metal needed letting in. There had also been poor repairs to the bonnet, A-posts and rear wheelarches.
‘The new body panels needed hammer work, to reshape repair sections before welding. I split the bonnet into three individual panels – along the beading at the top of the front wing sections – to work on separately before re-bonding them back together.
‘After the brightwork returned from rechroming, the next stage was to ensure it all fitted, before removing it and coating every surface with epoxy primer.’
Once the primer had cured, the bodyshell went to Phil Beveridge. ‘With regard to fit and finish, you have to get an E-type absolutely right at the body-inwhite stage,’ he said. ‘People often end up doing them in the wrong order, trying to get the panels to fit once they’ve already been painted or had trim and seals fitted, then end up with doors that are too hard to seal, or which need too hard a slam to close, which damages them. People also try to do too much at once with them, rushing the job – while these were mass-produced cars, they were still largely handbuilt and this needs respecting in restoration too.
‘Panel fit, especially on the tailgate, needed to be done slowly. Having trial-fitted the hatch, I undid the bottom hinge, and realised the top hinge sat too far outwards. I refitted the bottom hinge, then made tiny adjustments, until the top of the hatch was aligned and the upper hinge could be properly fixed in place. Jaguar had people doing this on the lines when the E-type was new, but tolerances weren’t as people expect these days.
‘To fit the doors, I used a credit card to test the gaps for evenness between their leading edges and the A-posts, before fixing the hinge locations. Once all the panels were in place, I used Vernier calipers to ensure consistent measurements allround. Then the panels could be taken off again for painting.’
But what colour to finish the car in? ‘We’d avoided choosing a colour for as long as possible, waiting for a customer to come along,’ said Dean Allsop. As the team worked on the car, the direction of the restoration took a fresh turn. ‘Then sure enough, someone met us at a classic car show, and said he wanted a freshly-restored E-type. I agreed a price with him, and we decided to continue the build to his specification.
‘We had quite a lengthy debate about the colour though, to the point where we ended up painting the bonnet in three different shades – although it was originally red, we came down to this Indigo Blue, British Racing Green, and Opalescent Golden Sand, and took it out into the car park so the natural light could hit it and he could choose. He deliberated for an hour over the colour choices – trim as well as bodywork – before choosing this combination. Then we stripped the trial paint samples off and got to work spraying the whole bodywork.’
After painting, it fell back to Reeves to mastermind the detailing and finishing. ‘I had to assess the paintjob for defects – dust nibs and inconsistencies – which I ironed out by flatting in the case of the nibs, or heavy polishing in terms of other marks.
‘You start sanding with four or five different grits to take any nibs off, then three different pile lengths of orbital polishing cloth, depending on the severity of the orange peel in the finish.
‘On this car, I didn’t have to do much of that though. The trickiest job was fitting the seal retainers and rubbers on the bumpers and doors, which always results in some levels of marking to the paint around them. I had to take the marks off as I went along, using sanding blocks, then a small-orbit dual-action polisher, which both spins and orbits for the most thorough smoothing action.’
But just like Beveridge, Reeves had to take care to ensure the panels fitted properly. ‘When I refitted the doors after painting, I had to check their closure wasn’t too easy or too hard,’ he says. ‘And once the trim and seals were in place, no wind noise or water ingress, while also putting them back on without damaging any of the trim or paint, and still keeping the panel gaps consistent. E-types have a naturally tight panel fit, and their doors often catch on their A-posts. If you attempt to paint the doors with the seals in place, they won’t fit the bodyshell because the paint adds thickness and that puts more pressure on the seals which, given the tolerances on the E-type, is enough to prevent a flush shut. So I had to test-fit the painted doors with the seals in place, then remove them, fit them without the seals, then apply them afterwards, cut to fit. Once the car was completely reassembled, I took it outside and blasted a garden hosepipe at it to make sure none of the seals were leaking.
‘You can always tell an E-type that’s had off-the-shelf replacements because their doors will end up standing proud and won’t close properly. You have to go through this process of modification, echoing the handbuilt process of the Sixties, because aftermarket parts are very variable.’
Engine and gearbox
‘The cylinder head and block were together, but we found no carburettors among the boxed items, and the inlet and exhaust manifolds had been removed, so we’d need new items,’ said Allsop.
‘But it was a rested engine that hadn’t been turned over for quite some time.’ After initial assessment, Phil Beveridge handled the mechanical restoration.
‘The car was a true scrapper when it turned up – everything required attention,’ Beveridge explained. ‘I stripped down the engine, looking for signs of damage, and crack-tested the block. I also checked each conrod for bends and twists – they were all true, but the little ends were badly worn and needed replacing. At the end of the assessment, I reasoned that the block, head, conrods and crankshaft could all be reused, although I’d rebuild it with a rear lip seal conversion on the crankshaft because the original Archimedes scroll was leaking.
‘It needed new pistons, and I also removed the cylinder liners from the block. Most people restoring Jaguar XK engines don’t do this, but in an XK there’s a little window where the coolant passes by, which needs keeping clear. This is hidden by the liners, but it gets covered in sludge, blocks up and causes overheating. It’s another £1000-worth of machining work, but in the name of reliability, it’s worth it.
High point
Nick Reeves
‘The cylinder head itself was reusable, but I needed to fit new valve guides and followers. I reprofiled the cams, and altered the valve clearances. The original 3.8 valves have four thou inlet clearance and six thou exhaust. I reprofiled the original cam lobes to negate any wear and get them consistent, then reshimmed to eight and ten thou. This results in a longer life for the original camshafts, less duration, better performance and a smoother tickover. I’ve done a lot of learning on these engines, to the point where I’m now re-engineering them. We ran the rebuilt engine on a jig before putting it in the car. With a new set of carburettors in place, it let us set them up at tickover, and check for any oil or coolant leaks – it’s a pig to get the engine in and out of the car if you only find them once it’s been installed!
‘The gearbox is a five-speed conversion made by E-Type Fabs. It uses Tremec – formerly Borg Warner – T5 internals built into a Moss-style casing, so I could use a standard E-type clutch with it, with the plate modified to accommodate the new input shaft. The differential is the standard 3.07, which just needed refurbishing. The crownwheel and pinion were in good condition, but I sleeved the output shafts. Where the lip seals sit at the rear output flanges, they tend to wear, flicking oil out, so putting a thin metal sleeve on it prevents this.’
Dean Allsop added a safety-conscious finishing touch to the engine electrics. ‘It’s got twin solid-state fuel pumps,’ he adds, ‘with options to switch between them if one fails, or both off together for security or in an emergency. We also make our own aluminium fluid reservoirs – the plastic originals can crack.’
Suspension
Nick Reeves rebuilt the E-type’s suspension. ‘Thankfully, we had a complete set,’ he says. ‘But the bearings were completely shot, and every suspension component needed stripping, derusting, repainting, rebushing or plating in some way, to the point where it became more economical to buy in new replacements.
‘The differential casing is original, however, as is the independent rear suspension cradle. They were very rusty though, so I shotblasted them, coated them in epoxy primer, painted and reassembled them, save for the new arms and aluminium hubs.’
Just because many of the suspension parts were brand new didn’t make the rebuild any less protracted though. ‘It took ages setting the suspension up – the rear camber in particular,’ says Reeves. ‘This was where our laser tracking gauges proved invaluable, but it was a case of setting the alignment, hoping you’ve got it right, taking it for a test drive, letting it bed in, realising it needs more castor or camber, reshimming, realigning, another test drive – and so on.’
Dean Allsop recalls the test-drive process; ‘We had issues with both the ride height and brake balance,’ he says. ‘I did 150 of the 400 test ‐drive miles in total, coming back with a list of snags each time. But the errors I would see would not necessarily be the same errors that others would find. In total, four of us carried out extensive test drives of the car until we’d arrived at the right suspension and brake settings.’
Interior and Electrics
Allsop tackled the car’s electrics himself, which needed building from scratch given the rotten or nonexistent state of the originals. ‘The original wiring loom was scrap,’ he said. ‘When we were laying out the parts in their boxes on the floor of the workshop, I touched it and it just disintegrated!’
‘So, I ended up taking a standard E-type wiring loom and adapting it to this car,’ he says. ‘With E-types, we use an uprated fuse box which takes more modern connectors for higher voltages which has to be amalgamated into the car, for reliability and to be able to run systems like air conditioning.
‘At Clayton Classics, we have designed an air conditioning kit for E-types. We took out the original heater box, and put one of our kits with an evaporator inside the 1962 housing. It looks very similar under the bonnet, although I also needed to add a condenser in front of the radiator, and run pipes into the cabin.
‘I integrated the air conditioning controls into the original heater switches. A thicker, higher-grade cable wiring carries more current, but the dash’s original toggle switches control it.
‘But I needed to add additional vents to deliver the conditioned air. They’re subtly worked into the cabin either side of the centre console. However, this meant relocating the original stereo speakers within the footwell. I also fitted another pair of speakers in the rear of the car, beneath the rear three-quarter windows, to deliver proper modern stereo sound.’
Chris Turley handled the retrim with his father Mick. ‘When you’re trying to save original E-type leather, if it’s in poor condition – as this one’s was – it ends up just crumbling if you try and rescue it, and stitch in new leather alongside it, and with varying thicknesses and deterioration over time, a restored seat can end up looking like a patchwork quilt,’ said Chris. ‘We figured we were better off starting from scratch.
‘Everything was rotten, so we had to go back to basics; shotblasting and powdercoating the original seat frames, and applying plywood strips around the seat squabs and bases. So much interior work goes on that people aren’t aware of when they sit in the car. The metal brackets for the wood were reusable, but the wood itself was rotten, so we used brand new three-quarter-inch marine ply for the bases of the seat cushions.
‘As for the trim itself, we tailor-made everything, cutting fresh leather to measure. Although plenty of places supposedly sell replacement E-type interiors, it’s of variable quality and you can’t get anything off-the-shelf that’ll fit. Even factory-approved spares always need some more material messily adding or taking away in order to fit cleanly.’
Aftermath
Despite having his perfect E-type delivered, Dean Allsop’s client didn’t use it much. ‘We actually put more miles on it test-driving it than he did touring in it,’ says Allsop. ‘After putting just 300 miles on the clock, it went into storage – for whatever reason he just didn’t have enough use for it.’
However, the car won’t languish – and you can help ensure that. Having done its duty demonstrating Clayton Classics’ abilities with E-type restorations to the public at concours d’elegance and shows, as we go to print with this issue, it’s going on sale again. One meticulously restored Series 1 Jaguar E-type, just 700 miles on the clock…
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