Diving In

Aaahhh…I now had a car with an exotic V12….this is the stuff of legends and dreams…I mean, look at these pictures

I then look in the engine bay and see this….

I drove the car for about a year and a half doing minor maintenance and fixes while building up the courage to dive in.   That’s a lot of hoses, wires and other unknown stuff in there.  I put together a plan, lined up parts suppliers and decided it was time for a major tune up, hose / wire replacement and general clean up.

I used a digital camera to take pictures and document every step of the disassembly process.  I was really worried about forgetting to assemble something (you will learn that I am quite anal when it comes to the car).

Here is a picture at the start of re-assembly with the re-gasketed and cleaned up cam covers on, new rotor, cap and Magnecor wires (they only come in red…would have preferred black).

In the picture you can see the new fuel injection harness.  This was a quality piece from Paul’s Jaguar in Florida.   These typically fall into the V of the engine, cook, get brittle and cause problems.  The idea is to tie wrap it to the fuel line in an attempt to keep it cooler and out of the contamination.

In addition to the above I replaced all fuel hoses (except the short pieces on each injector, more to come on those) and the normal maintenance items such as spark plugs, air and fuel filters.  Now it looked like this.

OK….the engine ran well (as it had before), I had peace of mind with all the new parts and it looked cleaner.  But it still can not be called a good looking engine….there is just too much stuff.  I have future plans for further detailing and ideas to remove clutter in the engine bay.