Caulfield Jag Service - Mk II

FROM DREAM TO REALITY

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After picking up 2 trailer loads of "precious" mk2 parts & declaring that this would be our concourse winning car, I was quickly declared "crazy", "insane" & a dreamer. While I knew all of theses statements were probably true, I had my mind set on putting all of the development work we had done on mk2's for the last few years into a car that could stand with anything produced in the world today.

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The car we started with had been dismantled for restoration some 27 years before & left sitting in a shed. We literally had to drag it out of the shed & load it & all the miscellaneous collection of parts onto the trailer & back to work where we further stripped the car to a bare shell.


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Meanwhile we were approached by Jon Amiss to build him a Mk2 with all modern conveniences to use as his everyday-driving car. Jon had actually done some work on Mk2's in his younger days back in England & still had a passion for the car. He wanted to be able have the car built for him without having to get more involved than choosing what he wanted & an interested inspection of progress every couple of weeks.

An agreement was reached, a contract drawn up & signed & work began in earnest. Specifications were changed slightly during the build, but we tried very hard to ensure everything was as clear as possible before the job began.

Before going to the panel shop, the shell was mounted on custom made cradles & all cutting & welding needed for the modifications was done. At the panel shop all rusted sections were replaced with new metal sections including, sills, door skins, guard bottoms etc. & all joins were lead wiped. After having rust treatment, sound deadening & insulation treatments, the body went through numerous steps in preparation for the beautiful British Racing Green paint to be applied.



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With the bodywork finished we could start fitting all of the assemblies which had been built while the bodywork was being done. These assemblies included the front end with XJ type engine & pwr steering rack mounts, rear end fitted with an XJ40 LSD, a larger capacity engine with later model cylinder head, higher compression & tailor made, programmable fuel injection all hidden under the inlet manifold. Electric windows & central locking were fitted to all 4 doors along with brand new tinted glass. Controls for the windows have been built into the original window winder mechanism so the doors appear standard. The air conditioning unit was fitted to the firewall after further insulating as well as the updated heater controls, EFI control module, cruise control unit & masses of relays, fuses & wiring needed to ensure trouble free operation of all the additional electronics. The wiring loom was covered in the original type braid but is a lot fatter than an original loom. The centre consol carefully conceals the electric seat switches, remote for the boot mounted radio & cd player, & additional window switches.



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The whole idea of building a car like this is to enable the owner to be-able to drive a classic car daily & not miss out on any of the modern conveniences we have all become accustomed to. We wanted to achieve this without compromising the wonderful look & character of the mk2 but maintain a level of finish, quality & equipment to compete with cars such as the new 's' type.



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Judges at the Sydney gold 2000 national concourse must have agreed that we have achieved this & tuned our dream into a reality by awarding "our" mk2 a gold trophy as well as outright winner in the concours d’etat.



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We hope to build many more of these cars for people, who really love them, because we really love to build them.