Dave@Moon

Unfortunately Jaguars have notoriously poor resale value, largely due to their maintenance expense combined and reliability reputation. That said there is also a very strong regional aspect to their values as well. Dealers use regional data bases to determine used car values more than the typical Edmunds/KBB/NADA guides we all use. For Jaguars that will mean that the car's value will be significantly higher in California or New Jersey than it is in Alabama or Indiana. There's just higher demand in those areas. So using the consumer guides will give a good idea of what the car's worth, but take that number with a grain of salt.

The distortion looks like that made when a scanned photograph is enlarged. The pictures appear to originally be the size and dimensions of those from a film camera using 126 Instamatic film.

At this point misunderstanding the point and purposes of ethanol is simply willful. Sorry.

I have a car in the shop which the customer brought in with reproduction overriders in a box. The rubber faces of the overriders are not attached, and have simple flat blades sticking out of them that pass through slots in the chrome piece. They are not drilled for nuts, and appear to be much too robust to bend without tearing the rubber. These are the first generation overriders for a 1971. The overriders are chrome bodies with a small rubber face that attaches to the front of the body. In the chrome body there's a square hole for the carriage bolt that attaches the unit to the bumper, and 2 slots 1/2" wide 3" apart that allow the metal blades embedded in the rubber to pass through. I don't have the ability here to post a photo. Thanks for all the help you can provide. Has anyone run into these before? Is there a clip or something missing that holds the rubbers in place on the overrider? Any help would be appreciated!

I'm afraid it does have to be a rebuilt motor, this is a car being thoroughly restored. If I can't find one for them then a used engine might be sent to a rebuilder. The one in the car turned out to have a cracked block that is probably beyond repair. Also I would have thought that such a recent motor wouldn't be that hard to find, but obviously I was wrong.

Does anyone know of a commercial outlet that stocks a rebuilt long block for a late MGB? I need to order one. I was originally going to use The Roadster Factory, but they've discontinued their rebuild service. :confused:

I had the same problem with my 1960 Buick. The only cure for it i found was finally switching to an electric fuel pump and relocating the fuel line. The Buick 364 is a perfect storm for fuel percolation: big engine/small carburetor, fuel line running along block not far from exhaust, fuel pump high on block also near manifold. Here's the original thread I started on the subject: http://forums.aaca.org/f120/boiling-fuel-1960-buick-stromberg-2-a-156423.html

You might want to rethink the first sentence. Current production costs in Saudi Arabia for 1 barrel of crude oil is between $4 and $6. They may have great cash reserves (I think that much is a pretty sure bet), but they don't need them at all. ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/28/oil-cost-factbox-idUSLS12407420090728 ) Meanwhile the production costs for the more-or-less exotic sources being developed in North America, while a vastly different story, aren't quite as sensitive to barrel prices as you might think. However the production costs outside of the Arabian peninsula are astronomic for oil, and will be for the rest of our lives. Read: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102326971#. Notice how the text disagrees with the CNBC video attached. The point is, the Saudis can bleed non-Arab oil production dry any time they want, and now that's what they're doing.

My best guess is 1958 hood lettering, but I'd want to know they're the same height to confirm that.

I still try to keep abreast of new cars as much a possible, and subscribe to Autoweek. I was about to defend them as one of the lesser commercially influenced magazines until last night, when between last minute present wrapping I picked up the 12/15 issue. Normally there is not as much fawning for each new car as there is in the other major rags, but this one took the cake. It was cover-to-cover a Dodge brochure. All the "articles" and all the ads were for Dodge, and there was little if anything to distinguish between the two. Not that I have anything against Dodge, but I was disgusted. I don't spend money on a magazine to read promotional literature. If you want to learn about new cars, read Consumer Reports. Their reviews are clinically objective, and lean more to the enthusiast bent on appropriate vehicles than most people realize.

Now in Ohio new drivers have to take driver's ed classes as a condition of getting the license, including classroom and road training. Most of the cars have single controls. BTW, I had my driver's ed class in a dual control 1975 Plymouth Valiant. I don't remember the car much (except for the stupid "gas saver" light where the left hood-mounted turn signal indicator would glow solid if I used too much throttle), but the instructor was gorgeous!

i found out today that being without transportation for a week just cost my friend his job. (He also declined rental car coverage on his policy.)

I don't know if anything can beat a 1970s Jaguar V12.

You could be 85 and they won't sell you a collector vehicle policy either, unless you also have another vehicle as a daily driver. Any vehicle your using as a daily driver should have to be insured under a conventional policy, and the evaluation of claims on antiques with conventional policies is often (if not always) onerous. If there is such a thing as agreed value conventional car policies I haven't come across one yet.

Dashboards too! However I am not sure that would be a plus.:eek:

Where I work (Toyota dealer) we call them "Manager's Specials". They range between $3000 & $7000 with no warranty.

I haven't read this entire thread (my time is very limited these days), but as best I can tell no one has touched on something vitally important to those using an antique as a daily driver. While safety in an accident is terribly important, it isn't the only concern once an accident happens. I have a good friend that recently fell on very hard times. He had 2 cars, a Subaru WRX daily driver and a 1967 antique car (brand unimportant, and withheld to avoid his potential embarrassment). When his situation changed, he found himself unable to afford to keep both cars. Foolishly (IMHO) he chose to keep the antique and use it as a daily driver. (Both cars were about equally valuable and capable as automobiles.) Obviously it was an emotional choice. This past Wednesday night someone ran a red light. The antique is totaled. Thankfully he was OK, as the car is not one with a stellar safety record or even seat belts. In that way at least he was very lucky. It is virtually impossible to get agreed value insurance on an antique the insurance company knows is being used daily or finds it to be so. (I would imagine that for a young person it would be VERY impossible.) Sadly, because he couldn't get reliable coverage on the car, he only carried medical and liability. Now he's at the mercy of the at fault other driver to get his loss compensated. Their first offer couldn't buy a set of good tires for the car. Hopefully he will eventually get something approximating the worth of the vehicle (I'm help him document that), but it's probably going to be weeks of no wheels until he does. When I was hit in my Triumph in September I had agreed value on it, which gave me leverage with the insurance company at fault as they wanted to avoid being subrogated against by mine. I got a very fair offer immediately. Had I been in my friend's position that car would have been lost and I'd be lucky to get a fraction of what it was worth. As much fun and appeal as it may have, I never recommend that anyone use an antique as a daily driver. There's just too much risk.

Sadly, I'm afraid all of us are aware of isolated instances where they seriously are money makers. In Allegheny Co. (Pittsburgh area, ~1.3 million people) at one time more than 10% of the speeding tickets were written by tiny Aleppo Twp., population ~1600. They probably still are. Aleppo Twp. happens to have jurisdiction over a very short stretch of 25 mph road that runs between PA Rte. 65 (Ohio River Blvd.) and I-79's interchange for that route, as well a short stretch of as Rte. 65 itself. It is not unusual to see 3 and 4 tickets being written there simultaneously. Another time I drove from Ft. Walton Beach, FL to Cincinnati, using secondary roads until I hit I-65 in Georgiana, GA. I drove through Georgiana at 8:00 AM on Easter Sunday morning, and on the short connecting route (GA 106) between Georgiana and I-65 I came upon 3 local police officers running s seriously well hidden speed trap in a valley on a 35 mph stretch that could have easily been 55 mph. I wasn't speeding (it seemed suspicious), but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because all three had customers waiting already, at 8 AM Easter morning in the heart of Bible Country! I don't think that stretch is in the city limits, so it may have been a rural township running that trap. However in that ~5 mile stretch I might have seen 2 other cars traveling at all. I consider this to be more an abuse of the police officers than of the motoring public. That job comes with risks that deserve more dignity than being defacto toll collectors. Happily such instances are very rare, but they do still occur.

I can't find it right now, but somewhere in my old 1960 Buick literature I have a pamphlet from Buick on how to read cloud formations and predict weather conditions from them.

That system is called VACSAR. Basically it consist of a stopwatch with integral calculator. Plug in the distance between the lines...instant mph. This is commonly used in PA because they have (or at least did until I moved away) some very reasonable laws regarding speeding enforcement. Only State Police are permitted to use radar and laser detectors. Local police must use timing devices or direct observation (following) to write speeding tickets. This makes it a lot harder for a municipality to be onerous or capricious in speeding enforcement. (Another good thing in PA is the benefit of the doubt given to observed speeders on radar. An instantaneous measurement will only be enforced if it is more than 5 mph over the limit. A timed/VASCAR or observed result can be enforced for any fraction over the legal limit.)

Using a stopwatch may still be done in some municipalities. I had a friend get a ticket from a police officer using a stopwatch and a measured distance between two parking meters in 1978. The ticket was for something like 31 in a 25 zone, which was ridiculous even then given the short distance between the two meters

Correct me if I'm wrong, but George Barris never touched a piece of steel in his life that was more than 30 years old, or at the time was even remotely considered rare, valuable, or historic. That's the difference. There's nothing wrong with a chopped, purple Ford Fairmont or a canary yellow and white Subaru BRAT. If someone wants to emulate what Barris' artwork was like in his lifetime, that's what they should be making. Remaking the same 1950s Oldsmobile rat rod with increasingly rare and valuable historic pieces that otherwise could be used to preserve a piece of real automotive history is simply not the same thing.

I'm one of the biggest purists on this site, and I posted the video. There's a world of difference between having fun with the remains of 2 20 year old Ford pickups and the remains of a 60 year old automotive endangered species. BTW, the way you know if this thing was in a rollover accident would be that everyone inside was dead. I seriously doubt that anything like modern safety standards apply to this vehicle, but so what.