Opening the Bonnet, A 1st Challenge

Once we got back from British Sports Cars we really wanted to get the car project started but were quite busy. Additionally we had, and still have a garage that is packed with stuff. Some stuff is inefficiently packed in and some things we don’t need at all; however, it is quite a job to make a space and then build a workbench.

Dale with some of his car magazine and book collection

But even more pressing was the fact that Dale could not open the hood, more properly know as the bonnet. He spent several days trying to push this and pull that. Then he actually opened the bonnet only to close it and of course it was stuck again.

What he found was the anchor for the cable on the movable latch was very loose and the anchor for the cable sheath on the body of the car was also worthlessly loose. Needless to say that with most British Cars, removing these two anchors involves removing quite a bit of sheet metal. So for now the bonnet will stay open pending remediation of the latch and cable anchors. 

A Jaguar Roars Again

Why British Sports Cars you might ask, when it is so far away? Well we had an amazing thing happen to us. A couple of years ago Rafe Saber from Canada, the guy who put us in touch with BSC started a face book page for Jaguar owners. He has since started several other pages for various Jag owners. So Rafe loves his Jags and has enjoyed making the connections between people, events and Jag restoration companies. People post Jaguar related events and companies will post the Jaguar related items for sale or services offered.  One such company on the site is British Sports Cars.

Unbeknownst to us, Rafe and Justin from British Sports Cars spoke via facebook and came up with the idea of starting our car and videotaping the whole event. Their thought was that the video could be seen throughout the world as a “Rip Van Winkle” car. Rafe sent me a message via facebook about their idea and we in turn sent a message to Justin via facebook. We then actually spoke by phone and, of course, met in person.

We actually had sent messages to Justin about 1 year ago inquiring about their services after Justin posted photos of their service garage. So you see we all met on facebook, never knew of each other until we joined the facebook club, the true power of social media.

What was amazing to us is that Rafe and Justin afforded us the opportunity to have our car inspected and then the event without charging us anything. For this one simple act we will be forever grateful because we would have likely not gotten started with any restoration for some time to come. Starting a project like this is daunting at best but with their push we have quickly gotten excited about getting our baby on the road.

So back to the big

event; we got into San Luis Obispo about 10a.m. but were unsure where to park. Now we have a big crew cab truck with a long bed and we were pulling this car trailer. There was no place to park in front of the shop so we put the blinkers on, parked in the left hand lane on the one way street and I went in to get some instructions. A crowd quickly gathered along the sidewalk, people looking and pointing at our car. A woman asked me what model it was as I walked into the BCS shop. It was so exciting to see the reaction from so many people as they all were ooh’ing and awe’ing.

Justin soon came and along with his father guided us to the rear of the shop.

After getting the car off the trailer Justin got to work adjusting this and that. The lights worked fine but other electrical items need work. With 3 of the BCS people the car started with a roar! We didn’t remember it being so loud! It was a tremendous sound to us. Justin was unable to drive it because the fuel pump does not work but that will be fixed in good time. 

And just a side note, British Sports Cars had the car Amelia Earhart drove sitting in their shop. I was thrilled to not only get to see her car up close and personal but got to sit in the very driver’s seat that she sat in!!!

A day to be remembered!

Alink to a better quality video of the Jag starting is on U-Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmkldSmFdVo

It Takes a Neighborhood To Move a Jag

To get the Jaguar on the trailer we needed wheels that would turn and roll the car, not a novel idea. But we had tires that were flat, flatter than pancakes, not great for getting the car around.

Fortunately our tires have inner tubes and we were hoping that they would not be full of cracks like the tires. We filled the inner tube inside the 35 year old tires and believe it or not they held air! We did promise to buy new tires next but to get the car on the trailer in a hurry we had to make do.

We had a big plan to get the car onto the trailer, just the 2 of us. But as these things go; we needed a new wench, needed fuel for trip, and on and on. So it was getting to be late afternoon before we could start.

We backed the trailer up onto our driveway but realized that we did need a little help. One neighbor was home and came over, then another came home and came over. Soon we had 2 more helpers plus moms and sisters with the cameras, grandkids running amuck and dogs on leashes to help protect us. It took a neighborhood to get the car up onto the trailer.

We had a glass of wine to help settle us at night before our early morning to British Sport Cars.

Brakes Broken

The old brake drum

So before we could trailer the Jag to British Sports Cars, Dale first needed to check the brakes on the car. He found that the brakes were binding and the car wouldn’t move. As the car had to be rolled up onto the trailer by hand the brakes had to be free. Dale found that he needed to remove the drums, so that the brake shoes would not bind on the drums, enabling the car to move freely.

Drum is off

In order to remove each drum Dale pried and wiggled each drum back and forth. The drums on the rear wheels came off easily but the 2 front wheels were somewhat of a struggle. After lots of prying finally the front drums came off.

Dale reattached the wheels on the car without the drums. Of course then we didn’t want to roll the car downhill as it would crash without any breaks.

After 40 years we can expect these things.

The Jag Will Run Again

So for now back to our Jaguar saga:

Getting ready for the inspection

This past January month a facebook friend, Rafe Saber, connected us with British Sports Cars. Rafe thought that it would be a great idea to get our car running; an old Jag on the road is worth more than many just sitting in disrepair.

We worked with Justin Jurgens from British Sports Cars, who would start the car if possible, in our garage. We scheduled the meeting on January 27^th.  

Justin stopped by our house to inspect the car and gave us lots of pointers on how to proceed but he really preferred to start the car at his shop in order to actually drive the car and access the motor. We did not set a date as we needed to check the brakes, tires and other items.

Justin Jurgens checking her out

Rafe really wanted to get this project underway so he worked with Justin to set a date for us to trailer the Jag to British Sports Cars where they would work to start it. This was most exciting but made us very nervous at the same time.

We had lots to do in a very short amount of time.

A Day of Racing our Ferrari

The next few posts will be based on memories of driving our Ferrari up to the Monterey, CA area for events centered around the Laguna Seca Historic Car Races in the early 1980’s. So until we find our programs and/or more photos I’ll post a follow up if and when we have corrected info.

In August of 1981 we belonged to the Ferrari Owners Club. In those days the Historic Car races took place on Saturday/Sunday so The Ferrari Owners Club had the Laguna Seca race track for Monday.

Ferrari owners belonging to the club, and who wanted to race their cars on the track could sign up to do that. We had to install a fire extinguisher in the car, and wear a helmet. We could bring any passenger we wanted as long as they wore a helmet as well.

There were two sessions so I took the morning session and Dale took the afternoon. We each had to first drive the track behind a professional driver to learn the line, and then could drive on our own,

racing against the clock.

Dale tells me, but we can’t find our photos, that he believes a black GTO belonging to Bob Price, was behind me. I was only concerned about driving so wasn’t caught up with the other cars. All I knew was that after we were finished, the GTO driver behind me told me that I’d done well as the he had never caught up to me!

The track has a fairly sharp corkscrew turn on the back side and turn #9 was nearly a hairpin. Coming down the corkscrew we couldn’t go really fast but had the RPM on the redline, engine screaming! What music!!!

Driving home on Hwy 101 that evening I remember hitting about 100mph and telling Dale that it was boring driving on a straight highway. Dale and I agreed that it was much more exciting red lining the car on the track. I guess it wouldn’t have been boring if I’d been caught by the CHP.

Time For A Larger Car

When we were about to have our 3^rd son we knew that we’d clearly outgrown the Jag and our truck. It was time to do some serious car shopping and we were really considering the Maserati Quattroporte.

As we looked at cars we realized that the Ferrari 308GT4’s were going to be replaced with a new and slower model. We found that there were only 8 308’s left for sale in the U.S., one being in Los Gatos. A quick trip to Los Gatos found a kind of aqua color 308 that they really wanted off the lot. Well it was time to help them out and the Ferrari was ours.

Driving the Ferrari was so much fun; we’d never experienced the cornering like that before. The speed on the straight away wasn’t so much of a thrill as we had to keep it down into the 90’sMPH, although we’d go over 100MPH when encouraged.

We couldn’t fit both cars into our garage so put our Jag into a friend’s barn. We still drove it occasionally so we didn’t put it into complete storage.

Dale was approached by a couple of people who wanted to buy the car but we loved the Jag and wouldn’t sell. Driving the Jag was a fun drive, different than the Ferrari, but a thrill: the open air, the purr, the power.

After a couple of years Dale did offer the Jag for sale to a guy. The Jag hadn’t appreciated much and we were not driving it so it seemed to make sense. As I took the guy for a ride I turned to him and said “I’m not selling the car, it isn’t for sale.” The guy replied that “my husband said it was for sale.” I told him that I’d changed my mind and wouldn’t be signing the Pink Slip, and as the car was ½ mine I could make that decision. We had an unhappy camper but I didn’t care.

A couple of other people tried to convince me over the next few years, offers to give me flowers every day and other nonsense. But we kept the car knowing that it would come back to life again.

Cars in our Early Years

When we were children, each Dale and I were taken to the car shows in L.A. Each of our dads were interested in cars and passed on their interest to us. My goal was to buy a Masarati. Dale’s, I believe, was to own a Ferrari but that is not clear.

My first car I bought for $500 a Ford Galaxy. From there I went on to purchase, on my own and brand new; a Plymouth Cricket, and then a Ford Pinto. Granted these were not the great cars but I did buy them with dreams of buying something better.

Dale’s dad gave him a car after college, a Lotus Elite which unfortunately got munched after a year.

We met at college, poor college kids. By then Dale owned a VW bus and I had my Pinto. On our 1^st date we went straight to the Ferrari showroom and looked at our new loves. We started dreaming of how we could buy one.

We got married, the poor college kids with our VW bus and our Pinto.

Many years ago, about 1973, a kid received a Jaguar XK 140 from his father. The kid decided to sell the car for the price of an airplane ticket to Europe and listed it in the paper. At that same time a pair of we, the newlyweds, decided to see if we could pick up a sports car. Not having much money we decided to look in the classified ads. Seeing the ad for the Jaguar we quickly rushed off to Household Finance and got a loan to cover the Jag plus a little extra to make sure it was ours.

The newlyweds got their Jaguar the very next morning and drove their car all over. A couple of years later they had a baby boy. Since there were no seat belt laws or child seats their baby was held by mom or dad whoever was sitting in the passenger seat of the 2 seat car. Top down the little family tooled around in style.

The Jaguar owners grew older and the family larger so a Ferreri seemed like a good fit for the growing brood. The Jaguar was put into storage for a later day and the 308GT4 was turned into a family car/nursery. Which role it served flawlessly.

Alas there were life issues, life got in the way, and the cars were put into an early retirement. But there was a plan that someday the cars would come out to purr again.

This is the story of our cars reemergence.