This page was written by the previous owner of the car, which is now owned by Eugen Emmer

The Mark IV auto on your web page which has the name of Dave Arnold under it, has been purchased by me. I bought it in late 2000 and had it shipped from Durban, South Africa to Norfolk, VA, USA in January of this year. (2001)

The car is still in good, but not show, condition and is running on the road occasionally. If you need any more information, contact me by e-mail.

This is the third Mark IV I have ever owned, a 2 1/2 in the seventies, a 1 1/2 like this one, in the early nineties and now this 1 1/2. I am a member of the Classic Jaguar Association and have been since 1970 thereabouts.
 
Sincerely,

Eugene Emmer
Calypso, North Carolina
 USA

Weather forecast
Oh no! Why me and why now?" I stared at the TV in horror. Sheila joined me as we gasped at the sheer power of the tornado tearing at the township. Harrismith was under siege, battered by a power so awesome as to be incredible. That was on Monday morning, the weather having done its worst the day before. On Wednesday, Johannesburg had had a season's rain in one afternoon. On Thursday, we left Durban airport for a quick one-hour flight to Johannesburg. Or so we thought. On Johannesburg approach, we fell out of the sky, the cabin looking like a suburb of Harrismith. We tried to land twice at Johannesburg, failed with a few metres to go each time, lightning all around us, and flew back to Durban. We tried again at 6.15 and finally landed at Jhb at 7.30 p.m. Five and a half hours in an Airbus with no beer! Surely enough portent to tell us to stop this madness. You can't drive a 1946 MkIV from Johannesburg to Durban in that sort of weather. Or can you?

Birthday Boy
It's all Sheila's fault, you see. Two years ago in one of those eternally regrettable moments of rash capriciousness, she asked me what I wanted as a 50th birthday present. The answer was equally flippant: a Jaguar made in the same year I was. That was how it started. The search began.
As things go, the resolution of the birthday boy's self indulgence was simple in the extreme. The Star Classifieds, one Tuesday in October 1996. "1946 Jaguar 1.5l saloon etc. Needs attention." A phone call, a look-see, a short ritualistic negotiation and we had a dream. A week later and the flat bed truck deposited "The old Lady" in our driveway. I looked at this monster motorcar and thought "Now what?"

Bad advice
There is a jewel in the Jaguar Club crown, the magazine, from which oracle flows a river of mixed blessings. "Let's start by looking for advice", she said. Class register head at the time, one John Loftus, was wonderful. He arrived next day and sort of drooled. "A real one in the flesh". You would have thought that we had discovered the Coventry equivalent of the coelacanth. It just happens that John has a much better one, (car, not fish), although at that stage dismembered and in need of reconstructive surgery. And so, following his advice and that of many club members too numerous to mention, a bumper to bumper rolling restoration over the next 18 months was foolishly started. To describe the jobs we did would take the rest of this issue. The shorter list is what we didn't fix.

Fix-it time
And so we began. Basically, the front passenger seat and the back seat were fine, the doors and windows remain untouched, and there were no nasty noises from the mechanicals. The sump and head stayed fixed to the block, but that's about all. All maintenance items were readily found except gaskets for the fuel pump (we made them) and the oil filter. It was Wally Vorlaufer who put a standard filter through the band saw to get the right length. Isn't experience wonderful? It was also Wally (but we secretly suspect it was his daughter) who rebuilt the steering box, the most expensive repair we had to do. On Dec. 22 1997 I had a roadworthy certificate and a police clearance. We were legally on the road!

Plan B
Happiness is often short-lived, however. A couple of months later we decided to relocate to Durban. As everyone knows, icebergs last longer in hell than Jaguars do outside in Durbs. The corrosive curse of coastal car cancer. Shivering chassis, what could we do? To the rescue, knight in shining armour (size XXXL) came Rob Herzfield. "You can leave it at my place, nooo problem". In a whispered aside behind cupped hand "Just leave the key". To save any embarrassing misunderstanding, I was heard to say "Rob, please give her a run from time to time." "Oh, alright, if you insist" he gloated. Does he always rub his hands together like that? Must have been colder than I thought. Anyway, we left the old lady at Rob's, went overseas on holiday and arrived back in Durban on 1 August. By the end of October I had negotiated Sheila's Daewoo out of our garage to make space for a real car and we were suddenly planning to bring her home to Durban.

Trouble
We arrived bedraggled and incoherent off the plane-trip-from-hell on the Thursday evening. On Friday, at lunchtime I collected the car from John Taylor and Rob, in Edenvale. The engine sounded a tad rough, but otherwise all seemed OK. Many thanks to the two of them for storing her. By the time I got to Modderfontein on my way back to the hotel in Sandton, I was doing 10 mph and battling. No power! So, pull off the N3, open the boot, out with the spanner and check the plugs. No 2 oiled up a touch but should be OK. Changed it anyway and restarted. No better! Crawled north past Alexandra chanting "Oh-eight-hundred, oh-one, oh-one, oh-one", the phone number of Autophillics Anonymous. But as fate would have it, a light touch on the throttle kept me crawling to Autoventures in Wynberg. Before I had left for overseas, I had given Sir Hamish (and Squire Dick) a set of BSF spanners just in case they ever needed them. At the time they accepted this truly wonderful gift of old with a grace born of decades of dealing with difficult Jaguar owners. For some unknown reason they kept them. I was thankful because in two minutes, the fuel lines were cleared and I was on my way again. I was so besotted with my now-perfect Mk IV that I even declined a cold beer! Anyway, a quick uneventful drive through Friday afternoon traffic and I was back at the hotel.

On our way
The next morning, Saturday, we were rudely woken by rapid automatic gunfire outside the hotel. A war cabinet meeting was convened, deciding that we should make a strategic withdrawal from the battlezone asap and try to get to Durban. We left at 7 am. We actually committed ourselves! On our way!
I suppose dear reader you will now be expecting me to list a catalogue of disasters, breakdowns and mishaps on the 400-mile route. I'm absolutely delighted to disappoint you. The Old Lady showed what she was made of. She never missed a beat, took the hills in her stride and carried us safely to Durban in nine hours travelling time. During the journey we overtook four lorries and a horse (walking), used three litres of oil and got a petrol consumption of 11 litres per 100 km. And the weather was wonderful! Not a drop of rain or a gust of wind. (The next day it poured in Durban). For a car with an all-up mass to swept volume ratio of about 1kg per cc she never ceases to amaze. She knows this of course and now rests resplendently beside her younger sister, a series II XJ6 in a garage labelled "Jaguars only". See you in Durban by the sea!
 
 

For those of you who can't put this article down, some details of the car:

Jaguar one and a half litre saloon, right hand drive, 1946, manufactured by Jaguar Cars Ltd, Coventry, England. Silver-grey exterior with black leather upholstery. Sunroof, tool kit in boot, opening windscreen, adjustable drivers seat.

Provenance: Unknown, except that she was said to have come from the James Hall Museum of Transport in Johannesburg. (Does anyone have any information for us?)

Chassis Number: 411798
Engine Number: KB1859E
Body Number B3919
4 cylinder 4 stroke petrol, overhead valve pushrod engine.
Swept volume: 1775.8cc
Compression Ratio: 6.8: 1
Bore: 73 mm
Stroke: 106 mm
Torque: 97 ft lb. (131 Nm)
Power: 65 b.h.p. (30kW) @4600 rpm (max)
R A C rating: 13.23

Fuel System: 14 gal (63.5l) tank with reserve. AC Sphinx mechanical fuel pump with hand primer driven from the camshaft, feeding a single SU horizontal carburettor with choke and hand throttle. Inlet silencer above rocker cover.

Cooling System: 20 pint (11.3l) forced circulation by centrifugal pump driven by fanbelt, Atmospheric pressure. 4 blade 12.5" (317mm) fan.

Transmission: Borg and Beck 9A6-G single dry plate 9" clutch with carbon thrust bearing and mechanical linkage. Four speed synchromesh (on 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears) gearbox, floor operated, with reverse.

Ratios: 1 : 1 (4th) , 1.45 : 1 (3rd), 2.43 : 1 (2nd), 3.95 : 1 (1st and reverse).

Transmission shaft to hypoid semi-floating spiral bevel final drive on live rear axle.

Steering: Burman-Douglas worm and nut box via 18" three spoke steering wheel, adjustable telescopic.
Wheels: 18" spokes with central knock off splines. 5.25 x 18 crossply tyres with tubes.
Live front and rear axles with elliptical springs and oil filled lever type shock absorbers.
Front and back self equalising drum brakes, rod linkages.

Electrical: 12v positive earth 50 A.H. battery. Lucas C45YV3 dynamo, 2 coil regulator, Lucas Starter motor with centrifugal engage. Standard contact breaker ignition and coil, Champion L105 plugs. Manual advance and retard on the steering wheel. Two speed windscreen wipers (on and off), self cancelling trafficators, instrument, boot and interior lights, twin sidelights and headlights, rear lights and reversing light, cigar lighter and wind tone horns.

Instruments:
Mechanical speedometer, odometer and trip meter. rev counter, fuel, water temperature, and oil pressure gauges, ammeter, clock.

Acceleration: 0 - 50mph in about, well, quite a while.

Braking: 50 - 0 mph in about the same time.

If you got this far, you could be "in to" old Jags. So now the inevitable request. Does anybody have or know the whereabouts of some bits I need such as:

Rear view mirror, red "D" glass for rear lights (LHS), "J" emblem for rear bumper, boot lid locking stud, boot tool locker lamp glass, fuel gauge, interior light cover glass, interior door handle, sun visors (left and right), gear lever knob, cigar lighter, manual throttle parts, bonnet corner pieces, badge bar, anything you think would be useful? Oh yes, I almost forgot, is there a recommended chrome plater in Durban?