by Peter J.Simms

My long standing love-affair with the XK-120 Jaguars is no secret to the people I know well. Hardly a month passes that I don't get a phone call from somebody that jotted down the license number of a "coupe" seen on Yonge Street or has knowledgeable of a friend of a friend with a pair of spare headlight-reflectors or bumpers around kicking in his basement. Needless to say I don't discourage this for no matter what parts I've got, or need, (or don't need), I'm always interested in buying this and that just in case this gets stolen or that gets smashed.

It really doesn't matter how many 120's I see either, for as an enthusiast I can never resist looking at a newly discovered one. Despite their seeming sameness to the casual observer, to me, each one has its own characteristics which set it apart from all the rest. Sometimes I think I'd like to own every one of them in the world just to ensure they have a good home and get proper treatment. But for this feeling, the Jaguar you see on the cover of this issue of the "Reflector" might have gone to the happy-highway-in-the-sky, by the way of the wrecker's yard.

It's second lease of life on life started with a phone call I received one dismal Friday afternoon in December 1964. "It's Sam" said the voice at the other end of the line. "I just had to call you right away. This friend of mine, Gus, who's been restoring his 120 Roadster has suddenley been transferred to Timmins and he's got to get rid of it by tomorrow morning. He's terribly upset about it and you're the first person I thought of."

Poor chap!

Could I help?

Well, I could look at it and maybe find a buyer for it, but nobody was to get any crazy notions that I would under any circumstances buy it for myself. I already had two and a third would be just too much, to which Sam, agreed unquestionably. Unfortunately, he knew my weakness and I had forgotten he also has a soft spot for 120's. Perhaps I should explain that Sam is one of these poor devils who was unscated from a Roadster by a wedding ring. Since then I had the feeling that the more 120's I acquire, the better it makers him feel.

Anyway, that evening found a small group of us trying to gain entrance to a crumbling garage behind a house on Dufferin Street. Unfortunately, Gus, the owner of the car inside, had lost the keys to the massive padlock, which left is but one alternative, cut it off. Luckily there was a hardware store nearby and so after purchasing a a hacksaw and two blades we began hacking away. Five minutes later, with dogs barking furiously all around us we removed the padlock and dragged open the sagging doors.

I'd like to tell you I was enthralled and overjoyed at what I saw, unfortunately "horrified" would better describe my feelings. There perched drunkenly on for oil drums were the bare bones of what had been a magnificent car. I had already been told that the car had been "stripped", but I think that "gutted" would have been a truer description.

Obviously these were not the remains of somebody's fair-weather-highway-car for besides a shattered racing-screen, bumpers were missing, upholstery was gone, seats were ripped and stained with oil and to top it off it had been badly damaged by fire. That burnt toast around the engine compartment (where the engine no longer sat) was all that was left of the wiring.

This reduced everyone to silence except for the odd little cough and meaningless grunt. What had promised to be an interesting evening was rapidly turning into an embarrassing and uncomfortable situation; how do you tell a guy he has the worst looking mess in the way of a car you've ever seen in your life.

Rather than being trapped into comment we all began looking around the garage, our flashlights playing on the walls and floors (anywhere but on the beast in the middle!)

"I see you have a work bench in the back", said a voice,

"It looks like its piled high with boxes", said another,

"Genuine Jaguar spares boxes", said I, "but they're all empty of course?"

Greedy hands reached out (mine),

"Here's a surprise: six new inlet valves"

"And what's in this one? Why, a set of piston rings!"

Voice from another corner: "I think I've found a crankshaft!"

A babble of voices: "Valve guides! - cam shafts! - bearings! - Smiths instruments!"

And so it went on, everything ideal for the coupe planned to restore the following summer, and then some!

This was certainly something worth talking about and do rejuvenated group made its way to the local tavern to discuss the matter. Of course the car wasn't not much was it, why I might even consider buying them for myself!

"Have another drink old chap and just how much were you thinking of asking for them?"

i had to fight back the desire to bellow loudly when he answered, "Do you think $75 for everything would be too much?" Thirty seconds later the contents of the garage were mine.

At this point i had to restrain my urge to rush away and fondle my new purchases. One thing i had to do though, secure everything for the night, so back once more to the hardware store and on with a new padlock.

Feeling like a kid on Christmas Day, I was back at the garage by nine o’clock the next morning. Unfortunately in my haste I had forgotten the keys to my new padlock, so here I was sawing away again in the midst howling dogs that finally succeeded in rousing the landlady who came grumbling out of the cold to question me. Why she couldn't have come out the night before when Gus was with I’ll never know. Anyway, I finally succeeded in convincing her that I did not have evil intentions after which she left muttering under her breath.

Once inside the garage I saw that daylight did nothing to enhance the appearance of the monster that greeted me. I learned one thing though, guys that race cars, hand-paint them with big thick brushes. What looked like molasses the night before was actually black paint.

After thirty minutes of playing and fooling with the parts, I loaded what pieces I could onto my car and left in search of a small truck. I should mention I bought yet another padlock! That night found everything that I could move in secured in my own garage, but the problem of how to dispose of what was still at Dufferin Street remained. The landlady had made it quite clear she wanted that ‘thing’ out of there.

By the beginning of the following week, after completing my inventory, I realised that I had almost a whole car. By the middle of the week I was determined that no wrecker would get my wreck and by the end of the week I had convinced one of our club members, Eric Daly, that he should help me move what was left on the following Saturday morning . . . Yes, I had decided to restore it.

Saturday morning came and after fussing and fuming for two hours with jacks and tires and tubes and wheels, the tattered XK-120 shell finally lumbered out onto the street joined to an almost-as-old Buick by a somewhat make shift and dubious looking tow-bar.

Our first attempts at negotiating a turn indicated we were in for trouble. Without the engine to weight it down, the front of the 120 leered through the Buick's rear window, threatening to go any way but follow us. There was only one thing to do, some poor devil had to straddle the floor boardless frame of the 120 and steer. I won’t say Eric insisted on doing it, but I was driving the tow car and he did say he’d give me all the help he could, so back he went and climbed aboard.

Apart from the gapes and leering smirks of passers-by, everything went fine until we got the intersections of Dufferin and St Clair. There, as we rounded the corner, the hooting and hollering of the local urchins was so overpowering I was forced to roll up my windows and drown it out. Only when we were out of earshot did I dare look in the rearview mirror. The pugnacious look on the face of the large red-faced figure straddling the frame told me I had better stop and change placed with him, or risk losing a friend. This incidentally is the closest that Eric has ever come to driving a real sports car.

And so the restoration project started. Most people that restore cars start I presume, by stripping something down. I had to start by building something up. I had already decided what I would tackle, what I would not tackle, and what I might tackle. Rebuilding the engine was thing I would not attempt so I carted everything off to a local garage with the understanding that it would be ready in "a couple of months". This was on January 15th. On July 27th I got my engine back after weeks of nasty threats and counter threats. Funnily enough, cost was never the bone of contention, just time. There’ll be a contract with penalty clauses if I ever had an engine rebuilt again!

In the meantime I had decided the safe test way to tackles the front-suspension and steering would be total replacement. I had long discovered I cannot distinguish badly-worn parts from those with wear left in them. I have since discovered that people in the business can't always tell either. After one solid week-end dismantling everything in the front end, I needed up with dirty pile of nuts, bolts, ball-joints, tie-rods and rubber rotted bushings. Fine, all I had to do now was sort them, count them and list them. This sounded easy until I realised that I didn’t know what everything was. You can’t ask for "eight bits of rubber shaped liked top hats or two brass things that look like saucers". There was only one solution. Get a parts manual. This I did with little trouble and what a valuable purchase it turned out to be! Not only was I able to describe everything and give part numbers, but where something unidentifiable was missing from the car, the parts manual was sure to describe it.

And so, with my list of front-end pieces typed neatly and described properly with part numbers I approached a local jaguar dealer. This was a nasty experience. One would have thought I was asking the clerk behind the counter to give them to me. This one attempt so upset me it made me determined to buy nothing locally; instead I purchased everything directly from England through a company called "FarFly Enterprise"’. They are an excellent outfit who specialize in parts and will go to great lengths to locate hard-to-get items for you. For those who may be interested you can write to tem at the following address: 25 Scafell Close, Nod Rise, Coventry, England. They are as British as "Roast-Beef-and-Yorkshire-pudding" and are rather fun to deal with. The chap who does all the corresponding is one Trevor R. Scott-Worthington, How British can you get?).

Shortly after I had the engine back in the car and the front end rebuilt, when I was starting to wonder how I would tackle the body work. or who I would hire to tackle it, I met Wilf Lardner. For those of you that don’t know him let me explain that Wilf is a body man by trade who owns two XK120’S. For me, the perfect combination! Wilf worked on my car, I imported parts for Wilf. What I couldn’t buy in the way of body sections he made by hand turning out pieces superior to the original factory issue.

By the spring of 1967, I was really starting to feel the car was nearing completion. The body was finished (bar the painting) the frame had been sanded and painted, the wiring was 90% done and the steering was rebuilt as were the front and rear suspensions. All that remained were the upholstering, chrome plating, windshield, top, and the fiddly-things like fender welding and trunk rubber. I foolishly underestimated the time these things would take and almost missed the Concours as a result.

During the summer, Wilf laid several coats of lacquer on the body. This was all done without experiencing any problems with sticking dust. This is the one advantage of using lacquer. Had we tried the same thing with enamel, we would have run into problems. Unfortunately, despite our efforts there was something missing, a certain depth and quality that is hard to define but is conspicouous by its absence. Here was a problem that clearly called for professional painters or I would end up with something less than the best and diminish the overall effects of my efforts. So after getting several prices around town the car ended up at "Lonsdale, – Garage". For slightly more money than other shops were quoting they redid the car in enamel giving me a finish that evoked lavish praise ever since. Now I had that certain something that was missing before.

By the time Concours-day was one week away I had every remaining job listed and allotted to a specific evening and for a specific number of hours. The first evening saw me going to bed at 4 a.m. convinced I had had bad luck. The second evening saw me just completing what I had allotted for the first evening and retiring at 3 a.m. which meant I just had to take the rest of the week off-work and give up part of my vacation.

The next morning I started out full of confidence to install the interior upholstery. This was one job that I felt sure that I could handle since I had already re-covered the seats and was satisfied with the results. I quickly learned, however, that hammering tacks into something that’s removable is quite different to laying on your back hammering tacks into confined spaces where you can’t even see. By the afternoon I was convinced that I had bitten off my than I could chew and was ready to throw in the towel. My main problem was keeping everything in place while I used my two hands to hold and bash tacks. Then the thought struck me - - "Contact Cement - glue first, tack later".

The first piece I glued held so well I questioned the need for tacks at all, I was running out of time and all I really wanted it to do was to hold on to Concours day; so, without further hesitation I decided to work entirely with contact cement. It proved successful, for not one tack was needed, and the surprising thing is that it’s still holding today, five months later.

Unfortunately my problems didn’t stop here. One frustration followed another, and when Friday morning came I was still well behind schedule. All that day I sweated and cursed stopping only for short intervals to eat a quick sandwich. By 7:30 a.m. the following morning after working all through the night I discovered to my horror that the door on the driver's side would not shut. In adjusting the striker plates I had omitted to allow sufficient space for the door panel. To correct it would have meant crawling back under the car and removing an awkward splash pan - - there just wasn’t enough time left, the door would have to stay open! At 9 a.m. my wind-shield-wiper-motor broke down just as bright eyed (fully rested) friends started dropping by. When they learned that I was thinking of giving up, they took over the washing and polishing chores, chiding me that I was really scared of losing to the 54 Corvette. It was this I think that made me condescend to go, just to show what a really good sport I really am. And do clutching one door surreptitiously with my hands I set off for the "Inn-on-the-Park" and Judgement day.

Once there I was glad I hadn’t quit and was too tired to care how many points I would lost. After going through the judging line (still clutching my door) I realized I had been more critical of, my work than was necessary. What I had thought to be glaring flaws nobody else seemed to notice. I think this the a state you must reach with prolonged contact, for weeks later I coulln't even find the imperfections that had so bothered me that day (excluding the door that wouldn't shut).

And so ends my Roadster story. I am now rushing furiously around buying parts for my coupe, the same one I was planning to restore when I got that phone call back in 1964.

NO MORE PHONE CALLS PLEASE!

P.S

P.J. SImms