Restoration Blog – 1959 Mk9

This page is a blog written by a WCS customer, Mr Bodene, as he restores his Jaguar Mk 9, doing as much of the work as possible by himself.

Mr Bodene is a former apprentice/employee of Jaguar Cars Ltd.  He began his apprenticeship as a coach trimmer back in 1972 and completed two years at Browns Lane before accepting a job as a professional musician. He’s now 64 yrs old and a retired Dr of musical arts and much to his family’s astonishment currently in the process of renovating a 1959 Jaguar MKIX recently purchased from France. 

If any other customers are interested in creating a restoration log, or would like to share tips or photos, please contact me as I would welcome your input for our website.

Total DIY hand restoration of 1959 MKIX JAGUAR by a retired OAP without breaking the on a pension friendly budget!

This Jaguar project is the beginning of what I started during the lock down.
 
After ignoring everyone’s advise not too, I went ahead and purchased a 1959 JAGUAR MKIX that required restoration.   I’m 64 years old and not in the best of health but I had the urge to rebuild a car. “You’re going insane” / “You must be mad” or “At your age in your condition you’ll never finish it”!  This was the general opinion and typical comments made from family and friends alike!
 
I said, “Far from it, as this project will stop me from going insane!” As far as the ‘not finishing what I started’  total red rag to a bull. I’ve never been one for playing golf and tottering around the garden, tending to the plants is far less fun. 
 
So I took delivery of the car at the height of the Covid-19 lock down and literally got stuck in that very day. 
 
After checking things over and finding all the mechanics were perfect (as explained honestly to me prior to my purchase), apart from an air hiss I assumed from the Servo, all the good boxes were ticked.
 
This is an all matching numbers Jaguar with Heritage Certificate present and only 63,240 genuine miles showing. To back this up it started up first time (and still does) with 60psi oil pressure not dropping below 50psi when at temperature and rising on throttle, great.  The engine ticked over beautifully and so very quietly as if it had just been fully tuned up. Good response from all moving mechanics which appeared to be spot on, showing no lag from gearbox also light smooth power steering too, brakes worked well apart from that hiss from the Servo area. I checked all fluid levels, plugs filters etc and found them all to be new, as explained to me before my purchase, the car had just undergone a full service. 
 

SEATS

I’ve spent a total of 147 hours renovating both sets of front and rear seats myself, by hand. They were in a sorry state of total neglect.  I’ve had to replace some large areas of leather hide, foam and soft filling, and hand made and replaced a half dozen old batton’s with new. 

Removing the rear seats was a fairly straight forward strip out, just lots of plus gas, and flat head screwdriver minimal elbow grease.
 
The front seats, however were a totally different kettle of fish!  Once I’d soaked the nuts and bolts in plus gas & wd40 they unlocked but still with some resistance against the spanners/ screw drivers so I went steady so as not to strip any threads or damage any screw slots or bolt heads.  I underestimated how heavy each section was! 
 
On the top back section of bench seat the leather and all its internals is attached to a thick sturdy heavy piece of marine pine, which houses the drop down picnic tables and other walnut burr sections attached to a heavy mild steel frame. The front bottom bench seat is similar to the bottom rear seat with its system of coil springs attached to a lighter metal frame covered in wadding, foam and horse hair all fixed to the leather upholstery along with (rexine/ambla material just like the rear seats) but is definitely heavier than the rear seat. In fact it was quite a struggle removing the front seats from the car, I’d recommend from personal experience, if anyone’s going to attempt this job like me, remove the rear seats first but get an extra pair of hands to assist you due to the heavier weight of the front.
 
At last I completed the front seats in the very same way as I restored the rear seats. Except the front seats were in far more of a state. Prior to my purchase, this JAGUAR MKIX had been standing around abroad for decades, with very little use and had been totally neglected. In fact the interior looked as if some body had tossed a hand grenade at it!  One could actually grab torn pieces hanging off the main parts of the leather upholstery and it would literally crumble into dust between your fingers. 
  
Bottom left front seat is where all the frame had rusted and collapsed, rotting through the original leather front panel upper battons & side sections.  There was a huge amount of wear & tear from years of neglect, showing mildew and mould with thousands of cracks and a lot of torn splitting, and many holes even leather bare in some areas.
 
I had to completely remake by hand and without patterns (the old ones were virtually nonexistent) from scratch 6 new seating batons.  I then went about cutting out and replacing all the top front and side sections with new/old leather.  I salvaged all the replacement leather from an old second hand burgundy Chesterfield 3 piece suite I purchased from eBay for £160!  So the replacement leather already had some very useful characteristic wear n tear to it. If you look at the photos of the bottom front bench seat you can see I’ve replaced everything from the left up then into the middle and forwards under the arm rest.  I then replaced all the padding and wadding with new then glued and hand stitched everything together.
 

After this I set about repairing the collapsed coil springs and raising up the broken sagging metal frame. Thoroughly cleaning all the rust & filth away from the metal frame & coiled springs using a wire brush, wire wool and white spirit.  After brushing it all down I rust proofed it, then re sprayed the main frame matt black.  The fully cleaned, now rustless springs were left with a zinc metal finish. After that I had to glue all the new wadding to the old frame and then set about stretching, and pulling all the new/old leather sections over the repaired frame so they formed nicely matching together well with the old original remaining leather seating.  

I salvaged all the original old chestnut and black horse hair stuffing and placed that back in along with the new wadding, this has helped retain the seats original feel and comfort. I then secured everything to the frame using glues, heavy duty red wax stitching yarn with upholstery needles of different styles and sizes, and hand made zip ties to restetch the springs and tension the whole frame back up.  It took some planning believe me, plus at times after a 10 hour day in the garage my hands were killing me and occasionally my old brain felt like it was in melt down.  

All the new/old replacement leather along with the existing original leather, was thoroughly cleaned, treated and flattened down with various grades of sand and wet & dry papers again by hand.  Then I applied glues and fillers to even out any of the remaining small imperfections and re-sanded before I applied a prep solution then New Bright Red Ox-blood colour dyes – an excellent product. Along with the fillers and glue I used, the product is manufactured in the USA and purchased only from the USA I highly recommend these products and I’m not on a promotional commission from them, it’s something I researched thoroughly prior to my restoration work.

These I left to dry in between several coats, followed by liquid protector creams and then a final wax! The final wax is a British product and is a lovely thick dubbin paste. So all done let’s hope they last another good few years, and I’m well enough to put some miles on them soon too. 
I did all this at a fraction of the cost of sending them out to be professionally reupholstered.

WOODWORK

It’s amazing what one can do on a budget with plenty of elbow grease. Cost me about £30 – I already had the beeswax finish top coat gloss polish and I’ve enough to complete all the woodwork. The hardest part was re building the colours up by touch and remapping the  swirls in the walnut burr, blacking edges and dotting centres etc,. Took me a few practice runs first then I got into the swing of it. So it’s great as the car, along with the leather upholstery, will also retain all its original wood without the huge expense of replacing the burred walnut veneer and lighter oak insets. I’m really enjoying the challenge doing all this work myself.

I reckon I’m about half way through the wood, I’ll work on the rear cabinets next then get onto the all the smaller pieces. I’m taking my time, paying meticulous attention to detail – its hard work on the eyes especially repainting all the missing burr correctly by picking and mixing the correct colours.
 
I’ve noticed that as well as the regular walnut & oaks, there seems to be a fair amount of mahogany too. Aching hands today – mind it will be worth all the effort when completed!

As you can see, most of the veneer on the picnic table cabinets was non existent. This is just after filling with wood filler and flattening. Preparing the filler for drawing / painting in the new burr woods effect. The next few photos are step by step of that process up to the final finished cabinet. In between building up the new burr each of the colours and swirls were lightly sanded with fine grade papers then wire wool. The secret of a good convincing look to the burr is to sand in clockwise and counterclockwise directions to give the burr more definition. 

ASHTRAY

I worked on the ashtray purely as they were always quite bland compared to the finish of the other woods in all Jaguar models. 
 
I imagine the reason for this was purely cost cutting from Jaguar Cars Ltd perspective.
 
Imagine how many thousands of wood fronted ashtrays were manufactured and the savings made by not using veneer over the years.
 

Having only a small area to veneer would have been fiddly and labour intensive for any skilled craftsmen, so the financial implications of added expense in materials plus production man hour costs outweighed the asthetic.

Photos show my stages of restoration to Ashtray wood repair, from disassembly, wood filling, flatting to final burr finish.  This took me approximately 2 hours work.