Part 6 - An Unexpected Journey

My wife had (outwardly) been very patient with me whilst, what she considered to be a heap of junk, had sat up on axle stands, on our newly laid drive under a grey Jaguar-shaped cover for the best part of a year. On pain of divorce, I had been warned that no oil or other noxious fluids were to find their way onto or into the pristine surface. 

Of course old Jaguars don't leak....they merely perspire from time-to-time from various orifices.  To avoid divorce proceedings, I re-purposed a bright blue plastic pool cover to protect the drive whilst the car was up on stands.  This was hardly a colour my wife had in mind when she was planning her rose planting in the front garden, however it was impervious to fluids and reasonably comfortable whilst I crawled around beneath the car.  On the assumption that this was a temporary measure, the bright blue plastic was tolerated!

It was high summer in England and I had planned a quick two-day trip to the West Country to take our jack-of-all-trades Range Rover Sport full of household items to our house in Cornwall.  The day before the trip, the Range Rover's electronic handbrake decided to give up the ghost and failed to release.  The car was well and truly stuck on my mother-in-law's drive, that coincidentally had been newly laid a few days previously.  The AA were called out and the recovery driver declared that the car would have to be dragged sideways off the drive on plastic "sledges" in order to be loaded onto the recovery truck.  Two tonnes of Range Rover being dragged sideways vs new drive....it didn't bear thinking about.  Fortunately, the result was not as bad as I feared and am still her favourite (and only) son-in-law. The car was soon at our local independent Jaguar Land Rover specialist who, with some schadenfreude, said it would not only be hideously expensive but take a good week to fix;  time I did not have.

The 1990 Jaguar XJS had been lowered onto its own wheels for the first time in three months just a few days previously.  The obvious solution (so it seemed to me) was to take the Jaguar XJS instead.  It's amazing how much you can fit in an XJS when you are travelling solo - so nearly everything was transferred from the Range Rover into the Jaguar.  My wife knew this trip was doomed to failure, but I was confident the Jaguar would come good.  On a warm, sunny, summer evening in July, I left Epping, bound for the West Country.  It was one of those drives that lives long in the memory.  The driving gods were with me: There were no hold-ups at the usual bottlenecks on the M25 and A303, or even passing Stonehenge. It was if the XJS was the only car on the road.  The Jaguar was being well exercised through the gearbox and the V12 was doing what it was built for.  It was a fabulous four hours of fast fun.

220 miles of high speed on a summer's evening

Up to this point, I hadn't driven the car enough to know the accuracy of the fuel gauge, so with about 40 miles to go, I pulled into my favourite service station on the A30 (The Hog & Hedge) for some fresh fuel which would suffice for much of the return journey too.  Pulling out of the services, the engine died.  I had been going fast, and with the heat soak from the V12 whilst sitting on the forecourt, I figured it might just be a little fuel vaporisation.  I opened the bonnet to let the heat out for a few minutes.  Ten minutes later I was on my way again, but 10 miles later the same thing happened just as I was overtaking an articulated lorry (why do these things happen at the most inopportune moment?).  I pulled onto the verge, knowing this couldn't be vaporisation....it felt like fuel starvation.

By this time it was 10.30pm and pitch black on the edge of Bodmin Moor.  The engine just would not fire and rather than completely deplete the battery, I wanted to ensure there was sufficient power for the lights so one of the many artics thundering by did not inadvertently hit the Jag.  I called the AA again...."oh hello Mr Jacoby, is everything alright with the Range Rover?...oh, I see, you're calling about another car today....a 30 year old Jaguar...mmm.  Well, we don't have any patrols near you at the moment, but we'll send one of our subcontractors from Plymouth to come and take a look....it will be a while".

I had an hour or so to think about the cause of the problem before the breakdown truck arrived.  In my bones, I knew what it was....the one item I had shied away from inspecting:  Between the fuel tank and the fuel pump is a small surge tank that allows the full contents of the fuel tank to be used.  It sits beneath the main fuel tank, so any sludge or scale from the main tank finds its way into the surge tank.  The fuel pick-up in the surge tank has its own mesh filter.   Re-filling the main tank from nearly empty to full had stirred up the cr*p at the bottom of the tank, which had promptly been sucked into the surge tank when the engine was re-started, effectively blocking the mesh filter and preventing any fuel reaching the engine.  It was this mesh filter that I had not inspected.  There was now about 90 litres of fuel in the main tank, so there was no way I could even imagine attempting a repair, let alone by the side of the road in the dark.

The breakdown truck arrived around midnight and the mechanic tried some "easystart" to coax the engine into life.  It was having none of it.  As we were only a few hundred metres from the next service station, he towed the Jaguar into the services before we decided what to do next.   There was no point taking the car to my destination 30 miles down the road as I would have no way to make the return journey the next day.  It was decided that the AA (and I really got value for money for my decades of membership this time) would relay the XJS the 220 miles back home to Essex.

Leg One - Towed off Bodmin Moor

The Jaguar had proved itself worthy and I (and my wife) could only blame myself that the car was making the return journey on the back of many AA trucks.  It was going to be a long night:  The first leg of 30 miles took one hour at the maximum tow speed for a Jaguar with an automatic transmission.  At Exeter services, we transferred to a low loader for the next leg to Bristol.  At Bristol, another low loader was waiting for the next leg to Reading.  At Reading.....no truck was waiting.  A call to AA control confirmed that no truck had been booked for the next leg, and as it was shift changeover, nothing would be available for a couple of hours.  By this time (about 4am) I was tired & cold and took a snooze in the driver's seat.  This was just like sleeping on an airplane....uncomfortable and fitful.  Around 6am a cheery AA man arrived with a splendid covered recovery truck, and we were soon on our way back to Epping, arriving precisely 13 hours after I had left the previous evening.

Despite the aborted trip, I had enjoyed the drive and surprisingly, even the return journey.  All four of the breakdown truck drivers turned out to be knowledgeable, enthusiastic and highly competent in all things automotive.  We talked about Jaguars (obviously), motorbikes (another passion, perhaps more of which later), drives, wives and the joy of the night....three of the four drivers loved to work alone at night.  Chatting easily through the small hours not only passed the time, but was a little insight into the lives of these road warriors.

Leg Two - Exeter to Bristol

The ride on the back of the breakdown truck had shaken all the debris off the fuel pickup's filter, so of course, the car started at once and was driven off the truck's ramp and onto the drive once more.  Here it lay for the rest of the summer.  In order to give us a deadline to work towards, I entered the car in a local autotest scheduled for the middle of October.  As the weeks went by, every time my son's car needed fuel, we would syphon it out of the XJS until just a little remained in the Jag's tank - so now it was time to take on the surge tank.   Armed with clamps, stoppers, funnels, containers and lots of rags we removed and cleaned the tank, replaced the filter (and the main fuel filter for good luck), re-assembled and the engine was running sweetly once more.  Not a drop was spilt on the drive!

Arrival Back at Base

In the meantime the MOT had expired so we couldn't drive it on the road, which as it transpired, was a good thing:  Going over the car in advance of booking an MOT test, we found some small items that needed attention:  Windscreen washers and a slightly rusty headlamp reflector....but what we hadn't expected were the large number of holes that had suddenly appeared in the sills and floor:  The high speed drive and the shaking on the back of the trucks had loosened large amounts of filler that had been hiding beneath the underseal, revealing enough corrosion to badly fail the MOT test.  As we looked closer and prodded harder, great strips of seam sealer fell out exposing yet more holes.  I remind you that I had bought the car with a valid MOT which was obviously not worth the paper it was printed on.

I formulated a plan (based on bribery).  If my eldest son would help me with the welding to get the car through the MOT, I would enter him in the autotest, driving the XJS too.  The deal was struck and a second entry booked with the Middlesex County Automobile Club.  This gave us just over two weeks (and I was away for three days in the middle).  Was it an impossible timetable?

More next time.