XJ-S V12 Hints and a Question

[John Napoli <jgn@li.net>]

I've been spending a lot of time lately working on the top end of my V12.
Here are a couple of tips that arose:

1.  When working in the engine valley, you get a lot of room by pulling
all the peripherals.  Rather than removing the coil, throttle switch, etc.
separately, consider removing the whole ball of wax as one.  Simply remove
the four bolts holding the throttle stand to the engine valley, and it all
comes out as one.

2.  Of the four bolts mentioned above, the rear two can be a problem to
get out.  They're even tougher to get back in.  A fellow XJ-S owner, Gerry
Duff, suggests the following:  after removing the throttle stand
for the first time, he cut the heads off the rear two bolts and threaded
them in to the valley by hand.  Now his throttle stand is retained by the
front bolts only, the rear studs merely line it up.  He has experienced no
problems, in fact the whole throttle stand is way overdesigned.  This
leads me to the next tip.

3. On my car, I modified the throttle stand further to lighten it, improve
airflow in the area, and make it easier yet to get in and out.  First, I
cut off the large, unused lug on the right side of the stand (a band saw
made quick work of this).  The, I drilled a series of large holes all
over.  Cleaning it all up and polishing a bit makes it look nice, improves
gas mileage, reduces emissions, and decreases quarter mile times.  It
didn't reduce braking distances, and I'm looking into that.  Seriously, I
removed a good fifteen to twenty percent of the total weight, and the
added airflow in the area couldn't hurt.

BTW, the throttle stand is not square to the plane of the engine.  It
lists side to side to accomodate the bellcranks.  This is important to
remember if you ever find yourself swappong a Jag V12 into, say, your
pick-em-up truck: don't use the throttle stand as a reference to level the
engine!

4.  While I'm at it, I plan to drill a Kirby hole in the front support for
the A/C compressor.  (Why do I call it a Kirby hole?   Because he thought
of it first.)  Every little bit helps.

John

(Note:  Kirby please feel free to include these tips in your book if
applicable.)

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