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| The Tiger that will give birth to a Snake! |
Well not quite. Not wishing to go through the pain and hassle of locating a suitable donor vehicle, trying to remove the necessary parts and then trying to sell / dispose of the remaining vehicle shell, I have chosen to go with a far easier route.
Following my chat with Ben Thompson of Simply Performance at the Stoneleigh show back in May, I have gone with the option of buying a Cobra Donor package. This means that Simply Performance will locate a suitable donor vehicle for me, remove the front and rear axles as complete units and deliver to my home, complete with the donor vehicle V5 logbook. Completely hassle free for me!
The AK Generation III chassis is based on the Jaguar XJ40 (1986-1994) or X300 (1994-1997) front and rear axles - the XJ40/X300 has outboard rear disk brakes mounted on the rear hubs rather than the earlier XJ6 versions which had inboard rear disks fitted between the drive shafts and the differential unit.
The AK front suspension utilises the bottom wishbones and uprights (both modified by AK), hubs, brake disks and callipers from the XJ40, while the rear suspension utilises the complete rear axle assembly (rear wishbones and drive shafts are modified by AK).
Ben is extremely knowledgeable about the various Jaguar models (which with all the different variants are confusing to say the least) and was very helping in selecting a suitable donor vehicle for me.
Two essentials on my shopping list were getting the biggest possible brake disks, with vented disks both front and rear, and getting a 3.58 ratio PowerLok limited slip differential.
Getting a Chevy powered beast to stop quickly and safely is, to me, an obvious necessity and so from the outset I wanted to get the best brakes that I could from the donor car rather than faff around trying to source larger disks and calipers later (I also wanted to try and avoid the expense at this stage of buying an aftermarket big brake kit).
Having driven two quite different rear wheel drive cars in the past, a 3.0 Ford Capri with an open differential and a 5.0 Trans Am with a limited slip rear differential, the difference between the two in getting the power safety onto the road and through corners (particularly in wet conditions) made getting the PowerLok Jaguar axle a no brainer for me despite having to pay a bit extra.
I also asked Simply Performance if they could do a full service / refurbishment of the rear differential unit just be sure it was all up to scratch.
Having given my shopping list to Ben just before I went on my summer holidays, I just had to sit back, relax and wait for my donor axles to arrive!
