Jaguar E-Type Series 1 3.8 Engine Rebuild

Well to start with the finish, here is the completely rebuilt Jaguar 3.8 Liter series 1 E-Type engine. The engine number was one of the last R prefix numbers, R 9932-9 and was dated 12 - 11 - 62. The triple SU carburetors, air/water rails, cam covers and other aluminum parts were polished. All new gaskets and seals were installed. When completed the engine was closely scrutinized for leaks and none were found. The engine sold on Bring A Trailer and the listing can be seen at this link https://bringatrailer.com/listing/jaguar-xke-e-type-3-8/

The lower end of this engine was said to have been rebuilt by the last owner. So, we disassembled the engine and inspected the crank, pistons and cylinder walls.

We found the pistons to be new and the cylinder walls with a nice cross-hatch pattern signifying that they had not been used.

The rods were clean, a good sign that they had been inspected before installation.

The oil pan had some left over residue so we cleaned it thoroughly prior to replacing the gasket and reinstalling.

The Lucas starter 26183B M45G was from a later car. We rebuilt the unit with new bushings, brushes, painted the housing and bead blasted and cad plated the hardware.

The gearbox EB 6337 JS, a 3.8 Jaguar XKE Moss box was disassembled, inspected, cleaned and reassembled with new seals.

The shifting forks were cleaned and inspected with the top of the gearbox.

The engine cylinder head was repainted the original gold color.

The HD8 SU triple carb set was disassembled, cleaned and rebuilt.

The triple SU carbs were installed to the intake manifolds.

Here the gearbox was mated to the engine.

When completed, we tested this on our custom run stand. It ran for hours, getting up to temperature and held consistently. We also performed a leak down (nearly 0% leak down) and compression (just under 170psi) test getting great results across all cylinders.