Parts and specialists

Parts supply for the E-Type is unusually good for a car of its age, and the reason is that several firms have been at it for forty years or more. What follows separates the suppliers from the manufacturers, because that distinction matters more on this car than on most, for reasons set out at the end of the page.

Parts suppliers

• SNG Barratt Group. United Kingdom, Bridgnorth, with branches in France, the Netherlands and the United States. Founded 1979. States a range of over 300,000 components covering mechanical, body, interior trim, electrical and lighting, for Jaguars from 1949 onwards. States it manufactures discontinued parts in house, and distributes the Lucas Classic and Girling Classic ranges. Publishes downloadable catalogues.
• Martin Robey Group. United Kingdom, Nuneaton. Manufacturing since 1978, using original press tooling and hand techniques. Covers Series 1, 2 and 3 in 3.8, 4.2 and V12 form, plus XK and saloons. Listed capabilities include presswork, laser profiling, sheet metalwork, CNC punching and machining, toolmaking and surface finishing.
• Limora Oldtimer. Germany, Buchholz. Classic car parts across British and Continental marques. States roughly 542,000 catalogued articles with around 350,000 in stock. Publishes 24 illustrated vehicle catalogues, some over a thousand pages.
• SC Parts Group. United Kingdom, Crawley. Dedicated E-Type sections split between the six cylinder cars and the Series 3 V12. Site operates in eight languages.
• Welsh Enterprises. United States, Steubenville, Ohio. Trading since 1965. New, used and salvage parts for Jaguars from 1947 onward, and operates a Jaguar only salvage yard.
• Terry's Jaguar Parts. United States, now operating from Portage, Michigan. Trading since 1976, covering XK120, 140 and 150 and the E-Type through to modern models. Note that its site now carries an Engel Inc copyright line and shares an address and telephone number with Engel Imports of Portage. No announcement explaining the relationship has been found, so the archive states only what is verifiable. References placing Terry's in Benton, Illinois are out of date.
• Moss Motors. United States, Goleta, California. Classic British parts distributor covering the E-Type among many others.
• David Manners Group, trading for Jaguar as jagspares. United Kingdom, Oldbury. Selling Jaguar and Daimler parts since the 1970s, now also other marques.
• Guy Broad. United Kingdom, Corley near Coventry. Combines parts supply with workshop services including in house engine rebuilds, with a stated specialism in XK models and competition cars.
• Jaguar Land Rover Classic. The manufacturer's own parts operation, selling factory sanctioned parts including over thirty E-Type body panels covering all three series. Treat its claims as manufacturer marketing. Note also that this operation has been renamed more than once, so older names and links in circulation are unreliable.

Who actually makes panels

Most large suppliers both make and factor parts, and the distinction is often blurred in their own marketing. What follows is what each firm states about its own manufacturing.

Firms stating that they manufacture E-Type panels: Martin Robey, which of the independents has the strongest documented claim to original tooling production. Monocoque Metalworks in Maryland, which fabricates panels and complete shells and describes its processes in unusual detail. Hutson Motor Company in the Bradford area, which states in house pattern and press tool making and that the entire body shell was available. RJ Panels in the United Kingdom, which states it manufactures 98 per cent of its E-Type panels in house, in steel and aluminium. And Jaguar Land Rover Classic, using new tooling made from original drawings.

RS Panels of Nuneaton is a coachbuilder rather than a volume panel supplier, and states it has made bodies for the C-type, D-type and E-type. Its website carries a 2012 copyright line and shows no sign of maintenance since, so the archive lists the firm but treats nothing on the site as current.

SNG Barratt, SC Parts, Limora, Moss, David Manners and Welsh all list E-Type body panels. SNG Barratt separately states it manufactures discontinued parts in house. Beyond that, none of them states that the structural panels they sell are of their own manufacture, so the archive describes them as suppliers of panels without asserting who pressed them. That is genuinely not established from public sources.

Restoration

Described by what each says it does, in no order of merit.

• Eagle E-Types, Uckfield, Sussex. Established 1984. Two strands: restoring original cars, and building its own re-engineered models, named as the Speedster, the Low Drag GT, the Lightweight GT and the Spyder GT. States approximately seventy client restorations completed.
• E-Type UK, Hadlow, Kent. Established 2008, E-Type only. Restoration, upgrades, bespoke builds and ongoing care, with its own bodyshop and paint facility. Markets a re-engineered model called Unleashed.
• Guy Broad, Corley. Restoration and servicing alongside parts, with in house engine rebuilds.
• Team CJ, Austin, Texas. Restoration, servicing and sales, with a full service engine machine shop. Distributor for Borrani wire wheels and the exclusive United States distributor for Suffolk and Turley interiors. States it is not affiliated with or authorised by Jaguar.
• Monocoque Metalworks, Maryland. Full E-Type shell restoration as well as panel manufacture.

The archive could not verify a Continental European restoration specialist to its own standard, which is a gap rather than a statement that none exists. It also could not establish the current status of XKs Motorsport in California, the restoration business that separated from XKs Unlimited when the parts side was acquired by Moss in 2017, so it is named here without a claim either way.

Engines, and a warning about capacity

AJ6 Engineering, of Bollington near Macclesfield, was founded by a former Jaguar development engineer and supplies products for the E-Type, XJS, XJ6, XJ12 and early V8 cars. Its greater significance to an archive is the written record. It publishes the Jaguar V12 Dossier, more than forty PDF files of historical and technical articles on the V12, covering crankshafts, fuel injection, emissions, combustion chamber design and supporting topics. It is a paid download rather than a free resource, and an older mirror of the same material exists elsewhere, which is where many forum links still point.

Guy Broad and Team CJ both state in house engine work, and E-Type UK describes engine work within its restoration programmes.

The point worth making plainly is this. XK and V12 rebuild capacity is concentrated in a small number of businesses and is vulnerable to retirement. Owners have already recorded at least one long standing British XK rebuilder closing when its proprietor retired. If you have a good engine builder, that relationship is worth more than a catalogue.

Gearboxes and axles are the least well documented area of all. The Moss gearbox and the Salisbury rear axle are routinely rebuilt, and parts for both are catalogued by all the general suppliers, but the archive could not verify a dedicated E-Type gearbox or axle specialist.

Trim, hoods and interiors

• Aldridge Trimming, Wolverhampton. States it has been trimming classic cars since 1931, with over thirty trimmers and machinists, manufacturing trim kits in house including moulded foams. Offers both mail order parts and full retrimming. Its E-Type pages are variant specific rather than generic, covering the 3.8 coupe and roadster, the 4.2 Series 1 roadster, the Series 2 4.2 coupe, and the Series 3 V12 roadster and 2+2.
• Suffolk and Turley, Nuneaton. Jaguar coachtrimming specialists. The archive could not retrieve their website during research, which may be a server misconfiguration rather than a closure. Independent evidence that the firm is currently active comes from Team CJ, which states it is their exclusive United States distributor.
• BAS, trading as car-hood, in the United Kingdom. Manufactures and supplies replacement hoods and interior trim, covering Series 1 in 3.8 and 4.2, Series 2 and Series 3 in roadster, coupe and 2+2 forms. Presents itself as a supplier rather than a fitting service.

On hardtops, the factory detachable hardtop is catalogued as a current part by Martin Robey for the Series 3, and hardtops appear in the Limora and Moss catalogues. No dedicated hardtop manufacturer was verified.

The less obvious things

• Wire wheels. Motor Wheel Service International of Slough manufactures wire wheels and offers restoration and tyre fitting. Its Jaguar wheels are described as 72 spoke with a 52mm centre and stainless spokes and nipples. In the United States, Dayton Wire Wheels are catalogued for the E-Type by Moss and by Coker Tire.
• Wiring looms. Autosparks of Sandiacre near Nottingham manufactures harnesses, and its E-Type range distinguishes between variants at a level of detail an archive can respect, with separate parts for Series 1 3.8, Series 1 4.2, Series 1.5 cars with a Series 1 dash, and Series 2 in several forms, noting variations for horns in the bonnet, three wire washer bottles and brake light switch position. British Wiring in Pennsylvania supplies harnesses for most classic British cars including the E-Type, though its site does not state whether it manufactures or imports them.
• Instruments. Caerbont Automotive Instruments in Swansea is the direct corporate descendant of Smiths Motor Accessories, by way of Lucas and VDO ownership, an employee buyout in 1993 and a management buyout in 2011, and continues to produce classic Smiths branded instruments with the agreement of Smiths Group. It is the manufacturer of the brand fitted to the car, not a reproducer of it.
• Instrument repair, and an important change. Nisonger Instruments in New York has been the United States distributor and service centre for Smiths and Jaeger instruments since 1949, but its own site now states that it is no longer accepting gauges for repair or restoration, the repair facility having been lost to flooding during Hurricane Ida. It sells instruments. It no longer restores them.
• Chrome plating. Derby Plating Services state they specialise deliberately in brightwork for historic vehicles rather than industrial plating, with work done by hand.
• Brakes and hydraulics. Past Parts of Bury St Edmunds states it provides remanufacturing and parts for hydraulic brake cylinders, servos and calipers, plus wheel cylinders, repair kits and clutch components. Its site does not describe its techniques, so the archive does not state them.

Tyres, where the sizes are genuinely confused

Two independent commercial sources, one a retailer and one a manufacturer, both state that 185VR15 is the period correct size for the six cylinder cars and that the wider 205/70VR15 is a later, aesthetically driven choice. Longstone Tyres goes further and says the narrower tyre handles better on the earlier car. The archive reports that both say this, attributed, without adopting the view.

Longstone publishes fitment by series. Series 1 cars are listed as originally on 6.40 H 15 Dunlop RS5 crossply, now discontinued, with 185 VR 15 radials as the modern option. Series 2 is listed as 185 by 15 Dunlop SP Sport Aquajet, with 185 VR 15 radials or 205/70 R 15 as a wider option. Series 3 is listed as E70 VR 15 Dunlop SP Sport Aquajet, with 205/70 WR 15 Pirelli Cinturato P5, which Longstone states was developed at Jaguar's request for power steering cars.

Why reproduction panel fit varies

This comes up constantly and it is usually discussed as though somebody is at fault. The documented picture is more interesting than that, and it comes from three independent directions.

First, the cars were hand finished when new. Classic and Sports Car's buying guide puts it plainly, that a part from one car will not necessarily fit the next one off the production line. So an original factory panel from another car would not necessarily fit either. That is the foundation of the whole issue and it is nobody's fault.

Second, the manufacturer entered the panel market in 2015 on an explicit quality argument, stating that it had taken huge steps to provide the highest quality E-Type panels on the market, using original drawings and new tooling, with dimensions recorded to within a fraction of a millimetre, and going as far as to say customers could now buy panels even better than the originals. That is a manufacturer's marketing claim, and it implies a criticism of what was then on the market without naming anyone. The archive quotes it and leaves the reader to weigh it.

Third, at least one panel manufacturer publishes detailed technical criticism of competitors' parts, alleging specific dimensional faults in reproduction valances and support walls, and contrasting fitting times: eight to sixteen hours to fit an original bonnet against a competitor's own published figure of forty hours for a reproduction. That is a commercially interested party criticising unnamed rivals on its own website, and the archive says so. But the structure of the claim is publishable, because the forty hour figure is a competitor's own published number and is therefore checkable.

The trend is reported as improving. Classic and Sports Car notes that specialists are working to improve poor quality pattern parts and that availability is better than ever, a sentence that concedes the history and reports the direction.

Common questions