Folks-
On Thu, 26 Dec 91, at 09:01:34 Wayne Angevine
<angevine@badger.Colorado.EDU> writes a long and complimentary note
about Lawrence's new old Daimler, and ends up asking ...
>>> While I'm on the subject, what is the status of Mk2s these days?<<<
What do you want? You can have a new one, if you'd like. A firm in
England is "remanufacturing" them. I saw one today, and it was
astounding. The paint under the Wilton trunk mat was as perfect as it
was on the outside of the car, the leather was wonderful, the wood was
far beyond merely perfect, and it was a general knockout.
It also had real steering gear (rack and pinion instead of the original
recirculating ball), _integrated_ air conditioning, and a host of other
improvements. Everything was built and finished at least as well at
the cars were when they were new.
>>> How outrageous are they (pricewise, that is)? <<<
The remanufactured ones are $70,000.
Nice, used, 3.8 Mk.2s go for $6,000-8,000 around here, but a show-
winning restoration will be much more. And, of course, you can have a
rusted-out barn rat for much less.
I assume you know that the same body also got 2.4 and 3.4 liter
engines, and there was an attempt at a "cheap" car, called a "340"; it
was a 3.4 Mk.2 with a plastic interior.
If Lawrence's Daimler is fairly nice, he got an _outstanding_ deal by
Atlanta standards.
>>> Were they sold in this country with manual or only automatic
trans? <<<
The Jaguars got both, and the transmissions fitted pretty much
paralleled the transmissions fitted to the 'E' Types of the same years;
i.e. the later manual transmissions were all-synchro.
I talked to my Jaguar man today, and he says the manual transmission
Daimler SP-250 (a/k/a Dart) sports car got a Triumph Isis gearbox, and
he assumes the sedan got that, too, though he's never seen a manual
tranny in one. The Isis gearbox (he says) is very much like a TR-3
unit, but with different ratios and a different input shaft.
He also said that the clutch in those is OK (contrary to my
recollection and earlier posting on the subject) it's the gearbox that
was a bit of a problem; the non-synchro low couldn't take too many ham-
fisted engagements.
He further says that the automatic could be a "POS three-band Borg
Warner" or the later "Model 8" ... he says the Model 8 is OK but the
"three-band" was known to leak on the show-room floor. He's worked on
Jags since 1960 or so, by the way.
I don't know about the Daimler, but the Mk.2 had a dashboard switch
that would hold the automatic in 2nd gear (out of 3); if you saw
something labelled "intermediate speed hold" that was it.
Since the Daimler was (and still is) Jaguar's "up-market" badge, it may
be that the Daimler only came with the automatic, but I am just
speculating here ...
>>>Is there a good reference? The Classic Motorbooks catalog had
several books listed which covered this car, too many to buy them
all.<<<
I don't have any suggestions here, except to say that good books, and
the knowledge they contain, are much cheaper than mistakes on old cars.
-Shel
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