Official Magazine of the Jaguar Clubs of North America Valentine’s Issue: Jaguars and Weddings Philadelphia AGM Beckons Make Your Slalom Debut January-February 2015 WORKSHOP & TECHNICAL XE BENEATH THE SKIN This second of four XE ‘skeleton’ graphics concentrates on the XE’s aluminum body architecture – an area of automotive design and technology where Jaguar are amongst the world’s leading experts. 14 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2015 XJ13 – A Phoenix Rises Part 4: Fire in the hole! By Peter Crespin and David Jones Fifty years after the first quad cam V12 was started up by Jim Eastwick for Bill Heynes, Jaguar’s legendary Chief Engineer, the scene repeated itself 80 miles due west. The date was October 30th 2014 and Jim Eastwick was at Neville Swales’ workshop, in the company of Bill Heynes’ son Jonathan and various ex-Jaguar people and other guests. October was the first public startup of the Jaguar #2 quad-cam V12 engine Neville found on eBay in Germany. Being totally genuine and now restored, Neville is using it as the basis of his tool room copy of the original, pre-crash damage XJ13, as chronicled in Jaguar Journal. Several ex-Jaguar employees who were involved with the original XJ13 design, build and testing were present and some of them shared their recollections. Peter Wilson (ex Competitions Department) explained the history of this particular unit as one of four built in 1963 and subsequently installed in a Mk X for road testing. Peter recalled it was no slouch, but eventually as the V12 development program switched focus from racing to road usage, the 4-cam’s cost and complexity issues, and particularly its emissions, favored the single cam version eventually put into production. Consequently, the engine fitted into Jaguar’s one and only XJ13 effectively became irreplaceable, until the discovery of this second surviving engine. The engine was displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in 1970 as part of a Jaguar history display and was then relocated to the showroom at Brown’s Lane. For some reason, it was subsequently sent to Jaguar Germany and after being used in a display was ‘lost’ until 2010 when an ex-Jaguar employee put it up for sale. Jim Eastwick (Jaguar Experimental) explained how, with the aid of Coventry Climax, a single cylinder engine was built to test combustion efficiency and JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2015 it fell to him to prepare and run the first V12 engine in the presence of the great Bill Heynes. Jim recounted how, after everything had gone according to plan, Bill Heynes had approached him and quietly suggested that maybe this was not really the first time the engine had run and that he’d probably checked earlier to see if it worked? There were perhaps one or two wry smiles in Neville’s workshop last October as that part of the story also repeated itself, because everything went exactly according to plan. After Jonathan Heynes had told a few interesting stories from his time as a Jaguar apprentice, the time came for Jim to fire up Neville’s example – for which he had reconstructed a mechanical fuel injection system. He duly pressed the start button for Neville’s impressive test rig and the engine immediately burst into life with that familiar roar that anyone who has stood next to XJ13 would immediately recognize. With the test completed, celebratory glasses of Champagne were passed around, giving everyone the chance to chat with Neville, Peter Wilson, Jim Eastwick, Brian Martin (electrical engineer for XJ13), Peter Jones (Competitions Department), Frank Philpott (Jaguar Experimental), Jonathan Heynes and Richard Hassan (son of Walter Hassan, a key figure in Coventry Climax and Jaguar V12 engineering history). Neville’s exact replica XJ13 alloy body shell was also on display and the engine and transaxle will be mated to it in the coming months and will be serialized here in Jaguar Journal. For a full view of the hour-long video go to Neville’s web site at www.xj13.eu or enter this short-cut URL into your web browser: http://tinyurl.com/l9kf5xx Neville operates the throttle capstan as Jim Eastwick starts the engine 15