OUR CARS
Went out to warm up the oil; got carried away
Phil gets lost in Sixties Britain 1962 Jaguar E-type FHC Owned by Phil Bell, editor (phil.bell@bauermedia.co.uk) Time owned 8 years Miles this month 127 Costs this month £63 Previously Decided to take the E-type off the road to start my winter jobs list
T
his keeps happening. I take the E-type out for a specific purpose, in this case to warm the engine before an oil change, then become so lost in the experience that I forget why I set out in the first place, returning an hour or so later than planned. I enjoy working on this car, but I love driving it, and I’m lucky enough to have a playground of lightly trafficked B-roads and swooping A-roads within minutes of my driveway. It’s like heading back to the time that the E-type was born into, before featureless dual carriageways became our dominant conduit of travel. And despite the season, bright sunshine was lighting up the landscape, just like it always did in the Sixties of course.
But eventually the extended loop returned to my garage, where a small stack of Duckhams 20w/50 cans lying in ambush jolted me back to reality. With a winter jobs list inevitably provoking a period of idleness for the E-type, if not my spanners, I prefer to change the oil and filter beforehand so that the engine internals don’t sit around in a cocktail of fuel residue and acidic combustion products. I’d been wondering what to do after the local stockist stopped supplying my usual Millers classic oil when Duckhams relaunched its 20w/50 at the Classic Motor Show back in November, so I took the opportunity to stock up. I did ask whether I could supplement it with a 15-odd-year-old can of Duckhams Q rediscovered under my workbench, but the technical people warned that the blend might have settled in that time. Not worth risking a £6k engine rebuild on a £30 can of oil then. Maybe I could sell it in an automobilia auction. Like many jobs on this car, replacing the oil filter involves removing other parts for access. It is possible to do it without detaching the aluminium undertray and huge air cleaner canister, but that makes it so much harder to ensure the oil filter
canister is properly aligned on its seal afterwards. Getting that wrong leads to a massive oil slick on the garage floor at best – stained concrete remains as a painful reminder – or catastrophic oil loss out on the road. So, like all the fiddly routines on this car, I’ve learned to allow extra time and pretend that I enjoy the opportunity to inspect all of the extra parts that must come off and the hidden areas that they expose. And I’ve convinced myself that the improved dexterity I’ve developed in fitting the rubber boot between the air filter canister and plenum chamber qualifies me to run a sideline in freelance keyhole surgery. Despite the aluminium sump and brass plug being in good order they’ve never made a good seal with a new copper washer, so this time I’m trying a steel one with a rubber seal bonded to it. After the agonisingly slow process of tipping 8.5 litres of cold oil into the nearside cam cover – these charmingly period-style metal cans don’t have the handy extendable spouts of the modern age – I summoned my wife to crank the engine over while I checked for leaks. All good, but to be sure the car clearly needed a proper road test and B-road Britain was beckoning once more.
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