Dad’s '62 Jaguar Mk2 3.8
My father purchased the car from Everett Smith, of Vintage Automotive Engineering, back when Everett was still panel bashing in Oakland, OR. Dad drove it in stock form for a short while, until the foibles of Mk2 design started clashing with regular driving over the hills of Berkeley, CA. The automatic choke device tended to go super-rich or super-lean, depending upon whether he parked pointing uphill or downhill, the DG250 transmission could not decide which gear it wanted to be in when criss-crossing the hills. Cooling was questionable. In short, it had a lll of the usual Mk2 issues that one would expect in a 50 year old car designed for driving in another era.
I drove the car back up to my shop in Washington to rebuild the engine and upgrade the suspension. We changed to a Mallory Unilite distributor and HIF carbs to eliminate the cold-start-on-a hill issues and I drove it back down to Berkeley again. Rinse and repeat over several years as I made improvement after improvement. I can't remember how many times I drove it up and down I-5...
About 10 years ago I took it back to do a not-quite frame-off restoration: repair some rusty spots, new paint, restore the externals, all the chrome and to replace the interior. We changed to a B-W Model 8 transmission out of a 420G. I changed to the XJ6 steering, got rid of the dynamo, added the stereo system. I designed the air conditioning system and married it to the existing ductwork. Slowly all the little shortcomings of a Jaguar were eliminated and we were left with just of the great things about a Mk2, style, power, great handling. Dad drove it in this state until he retired, at which point he no longer commuted to work, mainly driving it to car club meetings.
The final time I took the car back up was to convert to fuel injection and to change the transmission (again) to a 700R4 with overdrive. I totally re-wired the front half of the car. It was during this phase that both my mother and father passed away after a vehicle crash in Palo Alto. I kind of put the project on hold for a few years.
Finally, the time has come to finish things up and to find a new home for the car. I built the car for my Dad, it has never felt like my car. I want someone to drive it and enjoy it. I have a very short list of things I am still tinkering with. I need to recharge the A/C, now that I am done in the engine bay. We plan on updating the fuel injection firmware to the latest version, after which there will be a short period to finish dialing-in the new features. All the basic tuning is finished and it runs great already, but I like to make it as close to perfect as can be.