Jaguar E-type S1
1962 Jaguar E-type FHC Owned by Phil Bell (phil.bell@bauermedia.co.uk) Time owned Nine years Miles this month 0 Costs this month £0 Previously Phil removed the heater box – the only rusty part of the E-type – and a kind reader donated an original han
When I tried to get back on my feet after the snowboarding crash, the sharp pain in my left ankle told me I wouldn’t be riding off the mountain that day. When the X-ray in the medical centre confirmed that it was properly broken, a rush of thoughts flashed through my brain: a whole day of holiday wasted, at least my snowboard survived, how would I get to work on Monday, and will this make fixing the E-type difficult?
As it turned out, getting around was the least of my problems, but simple tasks that required standing for long periods conflicted with keeping the ankle elevated. Carrying anything when you’re on crutches tends to look like a scene from a Harold Lloyd film, always teetering on the edge of catastrophe – and sometimes over it, as it’s turned out, but that’s another story.
It didn’t take long for me to realise that working on the E-type in this condition was a stupid idea, but the voice in my head saying ‘what could possibly go wrong’ – the same one that seems so keen on me going snowboarding – eventually teased me back out to the garage. Which is how I found myself using my race jack in its secondary function as a sort of wheeled Zimmer frame, dragging and pushing it around the E-type to raise each end of the car and rotate the wheels to prevent my Dunlop Aquajets from flat-spotting. It seems laying up cars long-term is harder work than keeping them running.
At least I’d already detached the heater box (Our Cars, May 2019) so I could work at the bench to dismantle it, as I sat comfortably with my useless ankle elevated to the medically correct height using stepladders. I must have spent as much time getting myself set up and transporting various tools from garage to workshop as I did stripping the heater, but I was making progress again.
Because it had all been dismantled and renewed during the prior restoration, most things came apart easily, but a few of the small screws holding the casing together had rusted tight thanks to rainwater that had found its way inside. With those outwitted – one hand pushing the screwdriver into the screwhead, the other turning the screwdriver blade with a pair of self-locking pliers – I then managed to prise out the still fresh-looking matrix before tackling the air flap, which seemed impossible to remove from its spindle.
At this point I’d usually wander off to make a cuppa, returning with a rebooted brain full of fresh ideas, but carrying a mug of tea while lurching up the driveway on crutches is something even I think is foolhardy. If I can’t remove the flap, having the heater box de-rusted by shotblasting might not be such a good idea, because it would risk damage or leaving trapped grit behind that could somehow find a way to cause trouble in the future. Still, I’ve got plenty of ankle recovery time remaining with which to solve that one.