Decided to change the front bearings on my XF (88.000 miles). I had felt a little roughness through the steering wheel of late and an increase in what you could loosely describe as road noise. I've had these symptoms before on my S-Type and recognised them as a wheel bearing (at 40 odd thousand miles and under Warranty). I was not sure which one was the culprit but suspected the offside, surprisingly given pot hole prevalence for the nearside. So £100 apiece from Jag Spares North East as opposed to JLR eye watering prices I decided to do both. Nightmare.
Progress, nearside first followed by offside, was swift removing the Brake Caliper and Bracket, hanging it out of the way. Ground to a halt briefly at this point. Discs were stuck. They were original discs, hadn't been changed in the life of the car and were still in acceptable condition. I had however as part of the job decided to renew them anyway. A bit of Club Hammering and WD 40 and the discs fell off. Now for the Hubs. Removed the four bolts and that was it,stopped again, seized on. WD 40 to the fore and further cups of tea then returned with the Club Hammer supported by Cold Chisels, they were solid, obviously steel and alloy grown together. Much bashing later and large doses of WD 40 and the Hub assemblies began to move eventually breaking free and coming out of their housing in the alloy vertical link. This process of bashing and teasing took about an hour and half all told.
Reassembly followed very quickly except for the bearing sensor cable connector which Jaguar has conveniently put behind the wheel arch liner, inaccessible without removing most of the liner. However job done and silence is supreme. JLR really should visit their assembly process and apply better engineering practice during vehicle assembly. It's very simple really, introducing a barrier between Alloy and Steel if they are unavoidably bolted together will aid longevity and disassembly. A lick of copper grease or such like compatible barrier would work wonders.
Dave
