Realy OT - query on Jaguar Car Company WW2 history

[OldWood]

In the 1950's/early 60's my Dad had a van that was based on the late 1930's/40's Standard 12, and I took it on in ~1961. A guy that I was working with gave me a damaged engine that was based on the Standard 12 side valve but had been converted to push rod ohv. His line was that it was an engine from a Jaguar - an SS engine (SS=Super Standard). I swallowed his story, repaired the engine, fitted it to the van successfully, and boasted thereafter it had a Jaguar engine in it!!!

Last night for reasons that are totally unrelated to this I was triggered to read the Jaguar cars page on Wikipedia, and became very aware that nearly 50 years later I must have been horribly green behind the ears to have believed his Jaguar story - if nothing else it would have been horribly low in power for the up market cars they were producing from 1935 onwards. But it then did just cross my mind that the Swallow Sidecar Co., that Jaguar Car Co. renamed itself from in 1947 or so, might have done such conversions for MOD in WW2 - the SS therefore equalling Swallow Sidecars.

Anybody any ideas where I might pursue that possibility? Silly bit of curiosity really but in age and CV there is not much else to do!!
Thanks Rob

 

[Spectric]

I think that Swallow sidecars also made sporty car bodies that were fitted onto Austin chassis back in the thirties and the early jag engines were nothing special until the straight six XK engine in the fifties which would be a squeeze in a standard 12.

 

[AES]

Some (most) of this is from memory (so BE careful!) but .........

...... my first car (bought in 1964) was a 3.5 litre Jaguar SS saloon, year 1947. The model came from a range of 3 models, all looking very similar, but varying in physical size and engine capacity. The 1.5 litre the smallest and was, I think a 4 cylinder; the 2.5 mid size was, I think, a straight six, as was the 3.5 (mine). I was told/learnt that the "SS" did indeed stand for "Swallow Sidecars" and that they changed the name just after the end of WWII due to the "unfortunate" connotations of the letters "SS". I was also told/learnt that all three of the above engines all had wet liners AND that all three engines came originally from Standard (though I can't remember for the life of me who told me/how I learnt that).
Edit for P.S. I think these engines were all OHV, not absolutely sure, but my 3.5 definitely was.

I was also told/learnt that before/during the war "SS" had specialised in body building (including side cars for motorbikes) and that when they first started producing cars (in the late 1930s?) their cars were "bitzas" (i.e. they built the body but bought in components, including complete engines, from all over the then pretty extensive UK motor manufacturers).

What I do know ('cos I had to renew the linings - the car was about 99th-hand to me!) was that the car had drum brakes by Bendix and were mechanically operated (push-pull rods and bellcranks, NO hydraulics). I can't remember the clutch but again think it too was purely mechanical linkages.

There seems enough similarity in the above "I seem to remember" s with your own info above that I think if you really want to get to the bottom of the story, a search of a "proper" source would be worth while?

If not "Jaguar" itself, how about "Browns Lane"? or perhaps "Swallow Side Cars"?, or how about "(Sir) William Lyons"?

Don't think I can add anything except this pic, (the car did about 12 mpg, but back then petrol was only about 6 bob a gallon - mind you I didn't earn much back then)! But it was a LOVELY ride with a pretty awful gear change (4 speed of course):

Added:
2 leather bucket seats at the front (of course), twin (big) SU carbs; built-in sun roof and rear window sun blind (operated from either driver seat or by rear pax); wire wheels with big "knock-offs" and a provided copper-face mallet; and Jaguar (as "just" a name, NO leaping cat) cast into the knock-offs and the oil filler cap on the rocker cover.
That really IS all I can remember!

 

[OldWood]

AES that is a lovely bit of remembering - well done and a picture too. I hope you enjoyed going bacjk there.

I hadn't thought about the SS connotation.

We are in same period so much of an age. I went late to university and had 'wheels' - a pal from that time remembers the cold in the van back, but then someone had the wheels to get us places to camp and climb all through the winters.

Tell me - were the relectors in those lovely big headlights tilted by a solenoid to dip them? There was one winter trip earlier than university I think, where the lights all went out en route to the hills - we only had one torch between us to sort the problem (a chaffed wire), so someone had to sit in the back of the van with a candle to warn any other cars!!

Interesting about the wet liners - that's a new one on me. When that engined died with a gasket failure (trip to the Pyrenees), the block had been scored between two cylinders so the whole lot got scrapped and I got hold of a Ford Thames minibus, much to the relief of those frozen in the back of 'Horace'. I think I know where that block was dumped but I'm not going digging!!

Anyway it does look as if maybe it was a genuine 'Jaguar' engine after all. Looking back at your photo, the Standard was really about the same width, so maybe a Jaguar could have been driven by a 1.5 litre engine.
Rob

 

[OldWood]

AES - having gone back to your post there is a couple of further things worth commenting on.

Fuel consumption 20 mpg was my reckoning or was that the Land Rover some years later?

Brakes - the Standard had cables. You tuned them up for the MOT, retuned thereafter and used your gearbox extensively. There are one or two roads in Scotland that can match an alpine pass on a reduced scale and it was second or third gear all the way down.

Gearbox - the Standard gearbox was a sweety and therein lies your comment about your Jaguar one. I always drove it as a double declutch and it wasn't till we scrapped the van and dismantled the gearbox for the bronze that we found in fact it was a syncromesh but effectively worn out.

 

[AES]

Hi Rob, yup, it really IS a long time ago, but fun to remember (apart from all the hard work involved to get it/keep it "roadworthy" (that's in the widest sense of the word of course)! But I was young, single, and care-free then!

Re your: QUOTE: Tell me - were the relectors in those lovely big headlights tilted by a solenoid to dip them? There was one winter trip earlier than university I think, where the lights all went out en route to the hills - UNQUOTE:

YES ( a million times YES): I say that 'cos my dip packed up too, along with all the rest of the lights (but in my case, one of the dip solenoids got wet and rusted until it shorted). WHAT a game it was finding another, AND fitting it. Good ole "Lucas, Prince of Darkness" (though I must say that for their time, and compared to the Ford 100E Anglia which was my second car, those Lucas Model P100 headlights did work - when they worked, if you know what I mean).

A bit more "fun" remembering: The indicators were of the semaphore variety (Lucas again, and solenoid-operated of course). And the 2 front doors opened "forwards" (i.e. the hinges were on the B pillar). As I was in the RAF at the time, and as were were about to be permanently sent to Germany in late '65, although we had an allowance to take our cars with us, when I investigated the regs I found out that the solenoid-operated trafficators and the forward-opening front doors were both a definite NO NO for the Germans. So I had to sell the Jag - for 50 quid, same price as I paid for it a year earlier. (Mind you, fifty quid was quite a sum in those days, as you no doubt remember as we seem to be of similar "vintages" - I'm 75).

Ah, I'm going all "rose-tinted and gooey" inside mate. Cheers

 

[AES]

AES - having gone back to your post there is a couple of further things worth commenting on.

Fuel consumption 20 mpg was my reckoning or was that the Land Rover some years later?

Brakes - the Standard had cables. You tuned them up for the MOT, retuned thereafter and used your gearbox extensively. There are one or two roads in Scotland that can match an alpine pass on a reduced scale and it was second or third gear all the way down.

Gearbox - the Standard gearbox was a sweety and therein lies your comment about your Jaguar one. I always drove it as a double declutch and it wasn't till we scrapped the van and dismantled the gearbox for the bronze that we found in fact it was a syncromesh but effectively worn out.

Just seen your 2nd post Rob - crossed with mine above.

I never had a Landy (just drove RAF ones, so no idea what the mpg was on them). But as far as I remember (and as I warned at the very beginning, I would NOT rely on my memory for much at all these days), yes, about 12 mpg seems right.

I'm not sure if the gearbox was Standard's (came with the engine) or Jaguar's own, but again I don't really remember why but do remember that Jags of that period definitely were "dodgy" from the notchy gear change viewpoint, which mine definitely was!

But I AM quite sure about the rods/bellcranks brake operation (only the hand brake was cable-operated). Reason I'm sure is that after re-lining the shoes I had an awful problem with getting the brake on one of the wheels to act with equal efficiency as the other 3. So "foolish boy", I tried adjusting some "slack" on one of the push rods - which of course made the problem a million times worse! (Same as aeroplane control runs if they're push-pull and bellcranks BTW - LEAVE the flaming things alone!!!!).

Cheers, and all the best for 2021 mate.

 

[OldWood]

Interesting your reference to the RAF as the Standard originally had a pick up body on it and was I seem to remember used on the wartime RAF bases in a like manner to the Austin one you see in all the films for crew transport.

My father originally bought it from trhe Ednburgh Council Parks department in ~1954 for a major old house refurbishment. By '60/61 the body work was knackered and I, at 18, took it on. Before we stripped off the old body we went to the scrappy and brought home the front body off a Standard 12. Encouraged that to fit and built a plywood sandwich framed van body behind that. It was a nice father/son project - my basis of learning how cars go together - in those days!!

Sadly I cannot find pictures of either bodywork. Many adventures - two trips to the Alps and the Pyrenees to climb.

It might well be that Jaguar took the gearbox from Standard for the 1.6 litre engine as the bell housing and clutch spline would have matched - I don't remember there being Standards of my time that would had the bigger engines so I suspect that gearbox would have come with those engines. And I also suspect that synchromesh was relatively new in the 1940's and hence not reliable after 15 or 20 years. You shold have learnt to double declutch!!

Hope you have a good 2021 too.
Regards - Rob