The warm weather has suddenly arrived. I've started getting up
earlier, probably in the main because the birds living in the
bushes outside my window have been waking up earlier too, chirping
loudly over each other in a chaotic morning chorus. Yesterday was a
public holiday so I got stuck into working on the Jag early before
the heat set in, to follow up my now routine weekend blitz. But if
I start on that today I'll never stop for work because there is
always just one more step to do, so instead I'll write a little
summary here.
The great news is that with that new bearing (see
2023-10-25Bearings_and_Bare_Bums.txt) in the diff, the nasty noises
from the rear of the car when travelling at high speeds have gone
entirely. So that's the main problem solved. The rear shock
absorbers were replaced and I didn't suffer any exploding spring
issues with the spring compressor, although it turned out the
springs were 1mm thicker than the maximum rating printed on the
box. Really I'm too much of a wimp with compresed springs and half
my trouble was with reassembling the first one because I didn't
dare to compress them enough to get all the new, unsquashed,
bushings in place. The top of the shock absorber shaft had also
worn an impressive notch through the top mounting plate by rubbing
after the bushing the centres it had worn away. Luckilly after a
while trying to figure out how to make a big washer to fit in the
recess and support the shaft at the gap, I eventually discovered
that a 1-1/4" washer was the perfect fit, and about the same steel
thickness as the mounting plate too. Then I cut some bits off the
old bushing to stuff into the small gap, which then all jumped out
again during reasembly more times than I care to mention. By the
time I did the one on the other side (with a much smaller notch,
but I gave it the same treatment anyway), I'd figured out that I
could cheat by super-gluing the bits of rubber bushing together
first.
I kept thinking that I must be doing something wrong needing to
lever the bottom of the rear shock absorber into place with a huge
screwdriver, at great risk of hands slipping rapidly into blunt
objects, but after an hour messing around with different
orientations for the second one, I concluded that really must be
the only way to do it. I guess it's straight when it's on the
vehicle with the weight on them, so you could use the spring
compressors, but they scare me to much and undoing them in the
wheel well would be very awkward. Or maybe I'd just hit my head
against that wheel well so many times that I was senseless by that
point.
I certainly wasn't sensible enough to savour my success and drive
the car for a bit, because last weekend I dived straight on into
the front shock absorbers. With these I just wanted to replace the
bushings to cure knocking sounds when going over rough surfaces
(ie. about the first 3Km+ of anywhere from my house). This would
have been pretty easy if I'd gone the normal route and just changed
the top bushings, but determined to eliminate as many potential
sources of nasty noises as possible, I decided to do the lower
bushings too. Unususally these are pressed in to the suspension arm
instead of being part of the shock absorbers themselves as on the
rear shockers, so that was going to make things tricky. But before
that the worst part turned out to be undoing the bolt that holds
the front driver side shock absorber on at the bottom. The nyloc
nut on this turned out to fight incredibly hard all the way down
the thread. Worse, because it goes through the rubber bushing,
using a socket added enough leverage with all that force that the
bushing allowed the bolt to twist so that the socket would slip
off. I had to use a ring spanner instead, which I wasn't strong
enough to turn in the limited space, so I ended up using my leg to
push it the whole way. That left a spanner-shaped sore spot on my
heel for the rest of the day, but I made it. I guess working on a
Jag with limited tools is one way to stay flexible.
But then I dicovered the reason it fought so hard was that whenever
the front shockers were replaced last, the mechanic (presumably
using an impact driver) had either used the wrong size/thread nut,
or cross-threaded it. So getting it off had made a real mess of
about half the thread. It also turned out to be the first imperial
size nyloc that I've encountered on the vehicle, defying my
attempts to guess the size before removal and buy a selection of
probable nyloc nuts. So I spent the night trying to clean bits of
nut out of the threads on the precious custom-machined bolt - where
I ended up resorting to using a hacksaw blade to cut out between
the ridges of the thread. Then off to the nearest industrial
fasteners store (about an hour away) to get the imperial nyloc nuts
as well as two same-size regular nuts to run up and down the bolt
repeatedly first and try to re-bore the thread (at least that's one
trick I've figured out by this stage, although someone watching
could then accuse you of spending an hour playing with your nuts).
That worked alright, so I think the bolt's still usable without
risk of a shock absorber coming adrift and introducing a whole
different sort of shock. Then I went onto the bushings yesterday
and slowly wrestled one out with the aid of a big hammer and a
variety of chisels (an essential tool for working on these cars, it
seems). The most awkward part was cutting the rubber out of the
middle so that a hacksaw can be fit through the outer ring of the
bushing and cut a notch through so it can be folder inwards with
the chisel. It's not a quick job. Inserting the new bushing with a
G-clamp seemed like a great idea but wasn't, things kept going at
an angle and frustrating me no end. Eventually I gave up and
searched through the forums again, to find a unique method of
socket abuse where a similar size socket is used to press the new
bushing in by threading a long bolt through it to some washers on
the other side of the cavity, then tightening a nut up on the
socket end. That worked well, except that next time I'll need to
grind down one of the washers so it fits centrally - the bushing
ended up going in a bit crooked, which was another job for the big
hammer.
So I just need to do all that again on the other side, and then in
theory it should all go back again fine, in theory. But this last
task with the front shockers has turned out to be the hardest job
so far. I've also now determined that it's an irresistable
opportunity to replace the rubber boots on the steering rack, so
I've ordered them, and in theory that should be the easiest job
yet, but I thought that about the front shock absorbers.
So it goes on. But at least I haven't really wrecked anything
that's hard to replace yet, albeit narrowly with that custom bolt.
I like working on the car when things go right, it's just a pain
that they still often go wrong three times first. Perhaps that's
why the machanics don't want to know about it anymore, although
they ought to have the tools and knowledge to avoid most of the
troubles I have. In a way it's better not to have the work done by
someone with the sort of uncaring attitude that causes things like
that badly fitted nut too though. You can't really win either way,
like with most modern(ish) technology.
