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interior of the car.
I was very fortunate for the car to be chosen to be used for a photoshoot for the Classic and Sports car magazine “A Buyers guide for an XK8” (September 2014) which was printed in the February 2015 edition, 15 minutes of fame!
In December 2015 the car had done 90,800 miles so I had the gear box oil replaced as a precaution although Jaguar say the gear box is sealed for life the consensus of opinion within XKEC members is to change the oil at about 80,000 miles
Although very happy with the appearance of the car I was never overly impressed with the “Rabbits Teeth” style front grille also there were quite a lot of stone chips on the front bumper, bonnet and wings so I decided in June 2016 to replace the Rabbits Teeth with a full stainless steel mesh grille from Adamesh and lowered number plate mounting and full front end re spray.
The other stand out negative part of the car was the common corrosion of the windscreen, window and A pillar trims so I replaced the windscreen trims with new ones and had the window and A pillar trims rubbed down and sprayed.
I picked the car up on 30 June 2016 and what an amazing difference the grille makes it lifts the car and makes it look more modern and aggressive, the front end with no stone chips plus perfect window trims etc the car is perfect.
The date I picked the car up was important as the next day on 1st July 2016 I was heading on a 1,007-mile round trip to the Nurburgring in Germany with Martin and Connor in their X150 XKRS’. As excited as I was to be going on this trip perhaps a day after getting the car back was probably not the best idea I have ever had but the trip went well without incident however I did chicken out taking it around the Nurburgring. I just couldn’t do it after all this work and after a sighter lap with Connor in his XKRS the track is a challenge but the speed and recklessness of other drivers very quickly made my mind up that there was no way the XK was going round and would stay in the car park in one piece So all the work on the car was done,
Nurburgring was a success so the next event would be Show & Shine at Arundel on
48 GROWLER SEPTEMBER 2016
13 August so happy motoring in some lovely weather for a month enjoying the car in all its splendour. Show & shine was only two days away as I had booked a hotel near Arundel for the Friday night and planned to travel down Friday afternoon, the plan was to prepare the car on Thursday leaving Friday free ready for the trip
On Thursday spending many hours I cleaned and polished every nook and cranny on the car it was looking perfect so into the garage it went all tucked up with the car cover on Friday arrived and time to get the car out of the garage and do some minor jobs that were left over from the previous day, my garage is quite small and the XK just fits but as I was removing the cover from the front end it got stuck under the near side wheel arch but with restricted access I gave it a tug which freed it up but my elbow caught a full silicone gun complete with tube that was hanging on the wall and promptly fell onto the near
side wing despite my desperate attempts to juggle and catch it to prevent it hitting the car, my language was quite ripe along the lines of “oh dear I wish that hadn’t happened”
On first glance it did not look too bad in the poor light of the garage just some white marks which I thought was a bit of dried mastic that had come off the gun during impact however on getting the car out into daylight the full horror of the damage could
be seen. There were 2 scratches and a dent the size if a thumb nail which ironically did stand out like a sore thumb!
I was devastated after all the work that was done on the car to have this happen the day I was planning to leave for Show & Shine so my mind was made up that there was no way I was going to take the car with this carbuncle on the wing unless by some miracle I could get a repair done but at such short notice I realistically thought that this would be impossible. I duly arrived at a local repair centre specialising in small dent/scratch repairs at about 10.00 am they examined the car and said that it would be
Glitering prizes: Graham showing off his “Best of Show” award at Arundel
Picture: Graham Alexander
Picture: Graham Alexander
Picture: John Balkwell
Picture: Graham Alexander
WORK NEEDED
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