About this archive
Changelog
A dated record of the substantive changes made here: new pages, reworked sections and corrections, including the ones the archive would rather not have had to make.
Entries cover changes worth a reader's attention. Wording, layout and typography adjustments are not recorded. Where a change was a correction, the correction is described rather than summarised away.
Cross-site links reduced to one author credit
Links to the other archives the author writes were consolidated onto the author page, leaving a single quiet credit in the footer. An llms.txt file was added describing the archive and its sourcing rules for machine readers.
Page titles and descriptions shortened
Every page was crawled as rendered rather than read from source, and nine titles over sixty characters and fifty-eight descriptions over a hundred and sixty were rewritten. Pages needing a long heading and a short search title now carry both.
Storage, humidity and dehumidification
A new technical article on keeping an E-Type in a garage: where the disagreements over target humidity lie, how compressor and desiccant machines differ, what garage and floor construction does to moisture, and why idling a stored car is contested.
Site-wide search
Search moved from the technical hub and the questions page into the header, covering every substantive page. The index is assembled at build time from the same content the pages render from, so a new article appears in search without any further wiring.
Driving an E-Type through the winter
A new technical article on winter use rather than winter storage: salt exposure and underside washing, the water traps particular to this car, the coating families and what each costs you in access, and the conditions in which the car should stay in the garage.
Unearned source citations removed
Nineteen technical articles cited a Jaguar service manual for the 3.8 and 4.2 that had not been consulted, and six further pages cited a Heritage Trust research guide by issue number and date, likewise unread. Every one of those citations was removed. Where a claim rested on a false citation it was either reattributed to the source that actually supplied it, such as xkedata.com or the published marque press, or moved into an explicit unverified note. The how-to-read-this-archive page now states plainly that the archive works from published secondary sources and has not worked from the factory workshop manual.
The archive's own car documented
A page for 9769 HA, a 1963 Series 1 3.8 fixed-head coupe: its factory record, its ownership history, the restoration it received and what has been changed since. Photographs of the car followed the same day. It documents a car and does not offer one for sale.
Author page given a biography
The author page gained a biographical section and matching Person structured data, so a reader can judge who is writing and on what basis. A portrait was added shortly after.
FAQPage structured data on the questions page
The fifty questions were carrying Article structured data only, with the FAQPage markup missing. It was added, generated from the same question array the page renders, along with search and a live match count within the page.
Fifty questions, deduplicated and placed
Fifty questions people actually ask about the E-Type were written and grouped, then audited so that no question appeared twice and each topical answer sat on the page that owns the subject rather than being repeated.
Identification section
A hub with its own page for each of the four numbers an E-Type carries: why the car has no modern VIN, how chassis numbers are structured, what an engine number records, and why the body number matters on a monocoque.
Technical reference section
The technical articles were established as a searchable set built from one content array, covering the engine, running gear, brakes, cooling, electrics and bodywork, each with its own sources and its own record of what could not be verified.
The archive published
The first pages went up: the car itself, series identification, production numbers, the XK engine, restoration and the note on how to read the archive, together with the navigation, the hero photograph and the site's structured data.