Today Jeff spent the day welding the pads in place to put under the legs of the roll cage.
Horribly uncomfortable welding as his head was often down in the footwells balancing on one Elbow while his foot was operating the TIG pedal.
As he contorted into position to weld you could tell the strain he was under. I offered a rolling stool but that was worse. Then he'd look at his finished work and shake his head about how it just wasn't up to his normal standard.
To me it was perfect.Perfectly Even beads exactly following the contours of the car. Looking for all the world like a sewing machine stitched it.
I for one will feel very safe and secure thundering down those long straights to the cars top speed.
Good to see you guys making some progress!
I hope you put that old SU to good use.
Yes Thank you again!!!! It helped in 2 ways. Not only provided me with a needed 4th carb but the angle of the fuel bowl solved a mounting issue. I'll just reverse the side it's installed and then it will exactly match the required angle. In the end it will wind up looking Factory!!!
I'll send a picture when we weld everything together.
In reply to frenchyd :
Update.
Today I was the Helper monkey to Jeff our highly skilled builder of the roll cage.
I felt proud and unique.
Like watching Michelangelo carving out David.
As a skilled welder he never seemed satisfied with his work, like Michelangelo complaining David's right Butt cheek had a slightly wrong contour. Jeff found fault where there was none to be seen.
I watched him crawl into the car and practically stand on his head to put those stacked dime welds of his in spite of whatever contortionist moves were required.
It gives me great confidence that should something ugly happen at least the rollcage will hold up.
Thanks Jeff
Glad to hear abut the progress
I always feel that once a car has a good shell and a good cage that anything is possible. That is a very fun time in a builds history!
Good luck with it!
In reply to wvumtnbkr :
I pulled the other front fender off and everything unbolted/ unscrewed. ( thank you Southern California). But wow! What a difference! Both had dealer installed undercoating but the left one weighs 1/2 of what the right one did.
The right one was light enough that I doubted I could save much weight going to fiberglass.
I'm getting new fiberglass fenders done by the guy who did Group 44's but they are flared to take the 15x10's NASCAR slicks.
PS; that undercoating would have been worse than useless. Most of it wasn't well attached ( it just flaked off) and would have trapped salt water if San Diego ever salted their streets.
In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :
the roll cage is going together bar by bar but the fenders won't go on it Neil after Christmas when I drive out to get them.
In reply to frenchyd :
Last night the trio met to work on the Jaguar.
Jeff spent the whole time contorting himself into impossible angles in an attempt to lay down his beautiful beads. Talk about awkward. There is absolutely no way I could have done anywhere near as nice, so it's really wonderful to see him focus do hard on keeping us safe.
Erick dove underneath and removed an estimate 5,762,906 fasteners ( maybe a slight exaggeration?) in order to get the engine ready to come out.
I'm glad my wife told me not to micro manage these guys. I was kept busy grabbing tools, providing an extra pair of hands and bracing the board to hold Jeff in place, so he could lay down those beautiful welds.
During the Christmas break I'm driving out to Virginia to pick up the fender Flairs from the guy who did the original Group 44 flairs.
In reply to frenchyd :
Jeff and his magic electric glue gun.
Are you driving through Chicago on the way to VA?
If you still have the wheels you mention in this thread and you are still looking to sell them and you can bring them with you, we should talk!
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/new-shoes-for-my-jag/182444/page2/
In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :
If I have the chassis on the rotisserie by then I can do that.
frenchyd said:
During the Christmas break I'm driving out to Virginia to pick up the fender Flairs from the guy who did the original Group 44 flairs.
This is going to be awesome! The Group 44 XJS is one of my favorite race cars of all time.
In reply to Schmidlap :
That's the trouble. I started out to do this on a challenge budget. Bought a pair of turbo's and started working. Invited other to join and some did. Somehow my goal of doing a northern version of the challenge got lost along the way. And now We're going to vintage race with a group 44 tribute car.
frenchyd said:
In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :
If I have the chassis on the rotisserie by then I can do that.
Well don't rush on my account. But if it happens, then great!
frenchyd said:
Somehow my goal of doing a northern version of the challenge got lost along the way. And now We're going to vintage race with a group 44 tribute car.
Well Frenchy, sometimes life just sucks.........this isn't one of them. Vintage racing a big , noisy Jaguar sort of appeals to me. Looking forward to seeing this build progress and run.
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
Thanks. Me too. It's my own fault. I'm a progressive kinda person. ( not in a political sense, but it's how I approach life). As I'm doing things I look ahead and say to myself, then what?
The challenge is a really worthy goal. However once achieved what to do with the car? It's no secret that Vintage racing appeals to me. Doing so on a modest budget fits my current financial situation. ( in retirement) Vintage racing doesn't allow the constant updating ( and expense of updating) the cars already have their history, we just get to enjoy that history.
But a chance came to buy fender flairs from the guy who did group 44's and I couldn't pass it up. Until then we were on track to finish under the $2000 budget. Since the flairs cost the whole challenge budget that's out. But Vintage racing is definitely in.
Plus Vintage racing is fixed in time. Technology such as turbo's and EFI tuning aren't allowed. It's distributors and carburators. Aero is also non existent. Those fender flairs may look impressive but aerodynamically they are great big parachutes.
We are going to be sorting out the car using the existing engine. Which tested good. But instead of EFI it will have 4 SU carbs. Hopefully we should be around 350 hp. Using stock cams, stock everything. Just a little creative tuning etc.
Once sorted I'll grab another engine and with a budget of $1000 I'd like to see 600+ horsepower. In order to play with the big block Corvettes
Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:
frenchyd said:
In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :
If I have the chassis on the rotisserie by then I can do that.
Well don't rush on my account. But if it happens, then great!
That's a great probability. The goal is to have it up on the rotisserie so my wife can park her car in the other 1/2 of the garage.
right now it's hogging up the whole garage.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the flares. Should be super cool.
Progress report. The cage is nearly complete. All that remains is the drivers side door bars. ( pass side in ).
Next is pop the engine out. ( already unbolted) and remove the front and rear suspension cross members. They are relatively straight forward I used to be able to pull the rear end in an hour or less and the front in less than 2 hours.
Once free the body goes on the rotisserie and then we'll start cleaning stuff and get it ready to paint.
In the meantime I'll drive to Virginia to get the body flairs. I'll have to start weighing things to see how close to 2700 pounds I can get. I'd like to keep the doors steel but only if that doesn't push me over the 2700 pound goal.
Meanwhile let me plug my workmate bench. I bought it 20 years ago and it's proven invaluable building the house.
Now building that roll cage it was so tidy clamping the pieces of the roll cage in and doing the notching with the bar firmly clamped instead of rolling around on a bench or trying to hold onto the tube while cutting and grinding.
Buy one or something like it and you'll be amazed at just how handy they are. Not only in fabricating, but it seems an easily portable bench like that winds up as a place to set all sorts of things, tools, parts and manuals is just the start. Mine is shiny with shellac where I painted stuff.
My welding table with a big sturdy vise is only used when a welding project is in progress so all during my home construction it sat collecting dust. While this was used constantly.
Challenge without flares. Add them post-challenge for the vintage racing effort.
Progress thus far. 
