On the blink
1955 JAGUAR XK140 FHC
HOPPING INTO THE Jaguar the other day, I noticed that the indicators had stopped working. Turning the chrome lever produced no result and my immediate thought was a new switch was required, which would have been a real hassle.
Then it occurred to me that it might be a problem with the fuse, so I had a fiddle but no luck. Then I noticed the temperature gauge climbing because the electric cooling fan was not cutting in. Yep, I’d knocked that out when I was under the bonnet.
A quick call to Graeme Hunt Ltd (graemehunt.com), now just a few minutes’ drive from me, and I had the car booked in for next morning. I arrived at the mews and head mechanic Gary Puxty swung open the steel garage doors. I began babbling about how the indicator switch was not operating and that the engine was about to smithereen itself because there was no cooling fan. Gary gave me a withering look, asked me to open the bonnet and within five minutes had fixed it.
I knew Gary was a race engineer of considerable experience, but I didn’t know he’s actually an electrical engineer with heavy industry experience as well. As we know, you should always try the simple things first and Gary did just that by twisting the indicator switch unit under the bonnet in its mounting to recreate the earth and bingo: job done. The indicators started working again, slowly at first and then got up to correct speed again. He then asked me to start the engine and quickly located the loose fuse for the cooling fan, which immediately came on.
What a relief. Safe turns and no risk of cooking the engine now that the big and powerful cooling fan is in full-blast mode.
Next job will be to check the 123 electronic distributor and make sure the advance is correct. I have it on good authority that the advance curve on the distributor is not ideally suited to the XK engine because it tends to over-advance in the mid-range. At 3000rpm the most should be 30º BTDC. The vacuum advance pipe should also be removed and blanked off so I hope Gary can check this next time – probably in about five minutes!