So I’ve bought another XJ-S, but this time its the XJ-S that featured in the recent Sky series ‘Curfew’, which stars Sean Bean (who drives this car). It got delivered last night after I purchased it at the H&H auction in Buxton on Wednesday – and its already taken a bit of a battering on certain Internet forums full of grumpy middle aged men (I’m looking at you, PH).
Obviously the car isn’t standard, and amongst the modifications is the addition of a manual gearbox, upgraded suspension (from the brief look I had under the car), a hydraulic handbrake, a tiny race fuel tank, wider arches and wheels and the side exit exhausts. I was a bit curious to see how well the hydraulic handbrake works on the original inboard brakes but it does work reasonably well from what I’ve seen so far. The side exit exhausts aren’t actually connected up and the original exhaust is still in place, but finishes just after the centre muffler under the car and then is directed out to each side. Even just simply removing the back boxes has made this car a lot louder than standard.
I knew the car had no MOT, and in fact no MOT details show up on the online checker, meaning it was off the road at least before 2005 until it was modified for Curfew. I’m expecting some work to get it back on the road and I’m planning a few modifications of my own. We tried starting it this morning and though it was turning over fine, it just wasn’t firing. Fortunately cleaning the spark plugs helped and while it was initially running rough, it soon cleared itself out and started running a lot better, so its safe to assume it might have been sitting for a while.
Whilst moving it around we’ve also discovered that you can’t currently engage first gear or reverse, so the clutch needs some attention at least. The steering is also very heavy and the brakes seem to be pretty weak, even though the hydraulic handbrake works fine (which could suggest that the rear brakes only operate via the hand lever), so I’ll be curious to see how it has been modified once we get it up in the air on Monday.
The paint job actually isn’t too terrible, if you don’t consider they painted over the reversing lights and didn’t mask up properly, so the underside of the car is tinged green. It isn’t a huge issue as the car might end up having a colour change….and this time it will be stripped bare to do so. On another note if anyone knows how I could remove interior paint from leather it might come in useful. I don’t find the green interior particularly offensive and I’m no fan of grey leather which you can see peeking through in places, but it would be nice to have the option.
