1963 FHC – Inventory and Evaluation

One of my first actions on the 63 FHC was to clear out my shop space in anticipation of the restoration. I culled through a lot of existing stuff left over from my 67 2+2 restoration, keeping a fews things and trashing some items. A few of my items will go to Vintage Jaguar Parts. Owner Brad Merlie has a nice selction of NOS and used Jaguar parts. I also threw out a bunch of Porsche 944 stuff I had been accumulating. The end result was the opening up of 2 bays in the shop and a bunch of shelf space. The shelves got filled quickly with the boxes I brought down from their slumber in the attic.

I had gone through the boxes once years ago. I had organized them along the lines of the sections of the Jaguar Spare Parts Catalog, which has delightful hand drawn “plates” with exploded views of the subassemblies and item number callouts. The item numbers lead to long lists of parts with descriptions, quantities, and part numbers. In most cases, the parts are broken down into quite a bit of detail, such as a bolt, its nut, and its washer. Not at all like current practice where you generally have to buy a big component to get the small part that failed. Anyway, in my first go-around at inventory I typed much of the parts list into an Excel spreadsheet. This was probably right before OCR (optical character recognition) became prolific, as it would have been nice to have Adobe Acrobat Pro, where I could have worked off a scanned copy. Oh well. So basically, I took my existing list and confirmed my findings from before.

Subsystems that I confirmed included the front and rear brakes, the front and rear suspension, and the brake/clutch pedal assembly. As part of the inventory, I updated the spreadsheet to denote actions such as Paint, Plate, Repair, Replace, and Missing. The Missing category will be sorted out and will be the basis for procurement of new replacement parts, typically from SNG Barrett. There are some major categories of subsystems that are missing that doesn’t bother me, as I would be replacing them anyway. These include the exhaust system, hard and flex hydraulic lines for the brakes and clutch, and any component that requires a roller or ball bearing, such as the hubs and the rear suspension arms. I have a gas tank but based on my experience with my 67 2+2, I will be replacing it, as well as the fuel pump. I am also planning to replace the torsion bars, with the hope that new bars installed with the shop manual recommended “setting links” will result in a proper ride height on the first try.

As I may have mentioned before, my plan is to send my engine, transmission, and differential to Dick Maury at Coventry West for rebuilding. In order to get that ball rolling, I stripped some peripheral items off the engine and laid it down on a stout pallet that a landscaper gave me. The pallet is 4′ square. There is plenty of room on it for the engine, the transmission, and the differential. I used my race car scales to weigh each item. The engine, without the clutch, harmonic balancer, manifolds, etc. weighed in at 470 pounds. The transmission and the differential both weighed about 100 pounds. The pallet weighed 65 pounds for a total shipping weight of 750 pounds. Truck freight from NC to Atlanta was less than $200. I sent them on their way yesterday.

That’s about it for now.