 |
Keron Pirie
It took approximately a week to build it back up again to its present glory and after about 7 months of hard work in my spare time I had completed my project XK. |
It all started back in August 2005 when I purchased a totally standard xk8 in carnival red with the intention of making it a little ‘different’. I love the XK’s original shape and it’s so beautiful, you can’t help but notice it, so I didn’t want to change its originality too much. Firstly I decided to carry out the mechanical side of things first. I have a good contact for alloy wheels in the USA so on the phone I was ordering a set of 20” deep dish rims as there is a wider range of wheels to choose from over there. 
Being a 1997 model it has the smaller bumpers so I ordered a 2005 front bumper and a 2005 rear bumper from my new friend ‘Ebay’!! Going along with the 2005 spec theme I also brought 2005 spec side sill covers, chrome boot plinth, wheel arch liners, wheel arch extensions, boot spoiler, jewel rear lights and a few other items to do the job properly from my local dealership ‘Sturgess Jaguar of Leicester’. My next step was to fit the new rear lights and as the look the same shape I thought they would fit straight in….how wrong was I!! The new lights have more depth to them so with the help and guidance from the fabulous XKEC owner’s forum I found out that I needed to cut the old rear lamp panels out of the car and fit new ones in their place in order for them to fit properly. 
By this time my wheels had arrived so I had some Michelin Pilot sports tyres fitted and then fitted them to the car along with new disks and pads as well as re-painting the callipers while I was there to make them look like new again. As I have previously built a number of award winning show cars I wanted to do a few things under the hood just to spice it up a little so I had a custom made forced induction kit made to increase the air flow into the engine to ‘hopefully’ increase performance. Also I had a custom top radiator hose made in red along with some other red coolant hosing. I soon realised how little I could do to the engine bay so I just settled for some painting of the spark plug covers and a few other parts. 
As it was now towards the end of the year (2005) the weather was getting worse (no surprise there then!) so I decided to work on the inside of the car. I’m not a huge fan of the wooden dash so I coated it in carbon fibre to have a sportier look. Also I installed the 6 chrome instrument rings into the dash panels as well as a new ‘R’ gear knob and my personalised door sill plates. Now I know the original stereo setup is fantastic but I had to be different so I gutted the whole original setup and installed new uprated Harman kardon speakers all round, a pioneer head unit and a little something in the boot to wake the neighbours up! A 15” subwoofer and my phoenix gold amplifier was installed into a custom made boot build I had made earlier that day and believe me it ‘kicks’ when asked!
A few weeks went by and I had a friend with a bodyshop who let me finish the car off in there so in it went for about 2 – 3 weeks where I did all the bodywork and painted all the insides of the car in my new colour ‘Slate Grey’. Now before the car went in I knew what I wanted to do to the car which was to remove the side door strips, flush out the side reflectors in the front and rear bumpers, flush out the front bumper fog lights and bumper badge, flush out the rear ‘swag lines’ which are the two lines under the rear lights and the rear bumper parking sensor holes were removed for a more ‘smoother’ look. A few shopping trolley dents were removed and the whole outside of the car was put into primer ready for the final paint job. The car was then taken to the paint shop where it was painted and polished and then back to home for me to build back up again as the whole car was previously stripped in order to paint it properly. 
 |
|
Keron Pirie
It took approximately a week to build it back up again to its present glory and after about 7 months of hard work in my spare time I had completed my project XK. |
|