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These bushes are a well known failure point on the S-type.

Two anti roll bars are fitted to the car. One at the front and one at the rear.

Each bar is linked to the suspension lower wishbones by two small jointed vertical links. The transverse roll bars are bolted via location saddle clamps to the understructure of the car. Insulation from road noise, location control and shock damping is undertaken by replacable split rubber D section bushes.

Wear in those bushes, both front and rear can be detected as typicaly a "bonk thonk" noise when mounting speed bumps or encountering pot holed roads. The noise generated is as a result of worn down or flattened bushes. It is a defect which spoils the drive of the car and can be highly irritating. The car with defective bushes feels as if it is falling to pieces!. Parts are relatively cheap. The labour aspect can be difficult without some assistance.

The most suseptable to wear are the front bushes, which I have seen as unfit for further service at 44k miles on my 02 plate V8. By comparison, my previous V6 on an 00 plate, shot it`s bushes at 56k miles.

I believe bush material was improved from 04 plate cars and that most replacement bushes you are likely to encounter will be manufactured from that improved material.

Bushes are best changed with a car on a ramp with front wheels lifted off the ramp plates.

The near side saddle clamp bolts (13mm) are easily accessed. The offside is more difficult owing to restricted access adjactent to the air con pump. Access is improved by removing the plastic engine under tray.

With the saddle clamps unbolted and removed, the antiroll bar may be moved downwards using a large pry bar and the old bushes removed for replacement. You wil probably notice only a small amount of wear on the inner running surfaces of the bushes. Most of the excessive clearance between bush and roll bar is due to flattening of the bush material.

New bushes may be fitted onto the roll bar and clamps refitted. Fit bolts loosely to both saddle clamps before tightening fully. This may not be as easy as it sounds as the roll bar may again require the intervention of a pry bar to align the roll bar bushes and saddle clamps before bolts can be engauged in the chassis and fully tightened.

Please avoid doing this work on axle stands. Some considerable force may need to be exerted with the pry bar before the saddle bolts may be engauged and tightened fully.

Do not try to change bushes individualy. Considrable movement of the roll bar is needed in order to change the bushes. Saddle clamps should be removed from both bushes to help ease replacement.

At the time of writing, typicaly a pair of front bushes retails at around £40. Rear bushes retail at around £30 a pair.

This can be a difficult job. I have seen a team of three mechanics struggle to align and bolt up the saddle clamps on my car. Even then, I had to assist by putting the last bolt in a clamp. The guys simply ran out of hands!

There is plenty of tension in the roll bar when vertical links are still attached to the roll bar and suspension lower wishbone assemblies.

Although I have not tried this method yet, it may be easier to disconnect vertical links from the bar to ease fitment of the bushes.

Finally, those small vertical linked joints are items that can wear. The joints become sloppy and noisy. Priced again at around £40 a pair.

I was interested to see on the rear cover of our Sept 09 JEC Magazine, that David Manners offers a combined kit of 2 bushes and 2 vertical links for £57.50p This makes an excellent value purchase as the kit is normally £80.50p. A substancial saving indeed.

Can anyone add to this posting?

Mike Kennedy JEC S-type Co-ordinator

Prices

At long last and not before time, we have Polypropolene anti roll bar bushes available to us from SNG Barratt. Regret to say that at the date of writing I do not know the price of these items.

Seen at the recent S-type seminar, these bushes will be a significant improvement on the original OE supplied items.

Polyprop has significantly better wearing properties than conventional bush materials as well as providing a more rigid mounting location. It is also vastly better under load situations when one may expect the bushings to repell squash type load degradation which is a major known fail point with original bush materials.

Any draw backs? Perhaps only one. The chance of a slight increase in transmitted road noise. I would however suggest that a very slight improvement in suspension location could be expected with perhaps an improvement in steering "feel".

Bush life is also likely to be a significant advantage.

I only wish these bushes had been available five years ago!

If any member fits a set of these bushes, perhaps they could e-mail me a few pictures and words. I`d like to be able to put a small article in our Forum pages about these new bush kits in due course.

Mike

Last year (2017) I replaced my radiator and whilest doing this I replaced the front Anti roll bar bushes as it is fairly easy when the rad is out. If anybody has to have their radiator replaced I recommend that they have/do themselves the bushes at the same time.
The mistake I made was to fit pattern parts, (first line) the near side bush has gone and creaked terribly in less then a year.
I have just replaced both bushes again and this time with powerflex poly bushes. I purchased them from eurocarparts as this was quick and convenient for me £43:08 for the black bushes. There are two types, purple for general use and black for more demanding use. I was going to get purple, but ended up with the black ones. I think this is probably just as well as they should last longer under normal road use.
The job ended up not being as difficult as one might imagine, this is how I did it.
I drove the car onto ramps so the front of the car is a good hieght of the ground, wheels staying on the car. All the work was carried out from underneath, removal of the under enging tray is necessary to make the job much easier. Removal of the tray can be challenging if it has never been off before, I have replace all the fixings with stainless steel so it is a doddle to remove now.
I disconected both tie rods from the wishbones releasing any tension in the bar which is effectivly a spring. The clamp bolts have limited access but a small 13mm socket on a small ratchet works well. Access the front bolt from the front of the cross bar and the back bolts from the back. The drivers side front bolt has the heater valve mounted above it and this needs to have the two 10mm bolts removed from the front to enable it to be pushed clear to get to the 13mm bolt on the drivers side bracket front.
I gave the bar a bit of a clean at he mounting point with emery paper.
The poly bushes come with a special silicone grease to apply on the inside of the bush, I also put a thin layer on outside to make tightening the clamp down easier.
Reasembly is the reverse but you have to be careful not to cross thread the bolts when replacing as they can be tricky to line up. Running the bolts trough the tread from the otherside helps clear the threads and the bolts should start easily with finger turning, having no tension in the bar makes this much easier.
I took the car for a test deive and all creaks and noises have gone, it will be interesting to see how they fair over time. Hope this helps somebody. Regards Duncan

I see I wrote the first post on this thread in Sept 09. There has been a fair amount of water under the bridge since then and a certain amount of experience gained by me on S-type and x350 which to all intents are virtually the same car as regards parts.

I fitted competition Black Series Powerflex bushes at both ends on the S-type. That certainly stopped the slop without detracting from drivability. In fact that S-type had every bush changed for Black Series over a period of time with the exception of the two patent ball and tube units found in the lower rear wishbones. Those units were replaced with the Racing Green supplied RG109 OE replacement parts which Jaguar did not market.

The S-type also had B6 gas Bilstein dampers and Adamesh lowered springs. Now with all that done the car was magnificent on the motorway but a brute around town. The back end was very hard indeed. The X350R went subsequently towards a softer ride with Blacks on the bottom arms and with Purple Series in all the top wishbones. That made a very good compromise. Standard air springs are still fitted and I`ve yet had to replace any anti-roll bar bushes yet even at 96k miles covered. That pleasure is yet to come and I`m not looking forward to it as the ARB bushes are well covered at the front end and rather invisible at the back. I suspect both sub-frames will need to come down causing tracking to be required once the frames are re-located. The S-type rear sub-frame also needs to be dropped to replace rear ARB bushes. Index mark with Tipex before disturbing the sub-frame bolts. Be warned, I had a devil of a job when I did that job on the S-type.

So well done Duncan. Even the front ARB bush replacement without radiator removal is no easy task.

Mike K