she is a 1990 3.2 coupe ( 3.6 XJS....my bad ), and is his well cared for every day runner with 141k miles and counting, and not a weekend queen like mine ,
Phill until recently used a local garage for his work , but has discovered some short comings with the work and attitude, so i have been doing some of the work for him , he does carry out the minor things ( and not so minor ) himself , like cam cover seal changing and some underseal , among thermostat changing and keeping the rust at bay etc, but the heavy duty jacking the car up stuff isn't very practical on his own driveway ,
a few weeks ago he popped round for me to have a cursory look around to identify some work that might need doing, he knew he had a diff leak from the main pinion seal , and he also had a noise from the back , we also had a squeal from a front lower ball joint and the front stub axles had come to the end of their working life, but to be fair, she does now have 141k miles on the clock
the inspection identified that the rear anti roll bar rubbers also needed changing, Phil's car has this rear roll bar fitted from factory , as they did come and go with production ( my own V12 doesn't have it )
Phil ordered all the needed parts online, x2 new stub axles, x2 lower front ball joints , set of rear roll bar link rubbers and fixings kit, and a pinion oil seal for the diff and some diff oil, these were a mixture of genuine and after market parts depending on availability.
further inspection has also identified very worn rear wheel bearing and lower pivot pin bearing for the off side hub , this will be done in the near future when the parts come in.
as with all work under a car, ensure she is correctly supported before working, this involved an axle stand and two heavy duty trolly jacks for the work i was doing, first was the rear roll bar links, and guess what, totally rusted up nuts and bolts, but with a new fixing pack ( anticipated that one ) in hand i simply cut them off with the thin blade disc cutter , removed the link and pressed out the old bushings , pushed home the new ones and fitted the links, i then changed the bar to body wedge mounts , not too bad a job .
the next was the pinion oil seal , Phil bought a genuine item for this work , i removed the bottom bracing plate from the rear subframe, and ensured i could undo the fill plug , i then drained the old oil from the box , then with the car in park , and the handbrake on i undid the propellor shaft from the diff input flange , easy enough , then to give me some room i pulled the shaft extension off, the shaft is still supported by the central bearing on the 3.6 ( there isn't one the V12 )
with access to the pinion nut i marked the nut to body to set the same preload when re-assembling , with the handbrake on this nut came of easy with a knuckle bar , this allowed the input flange to pull from the diff , as i had already drained the diff there was no oil leakage , i then got the seal puller tool and to my surprise it came out better than expected, cleaned up the aperture mating surface, i also used some scotch-brite pads on the diff input flange to polish it up a little, as its this that seals against the diff , i then drifted in the new seal using a proper seal seating set , you do this until the noise changes indicating its fully home, applied some lubrication to the input flange and pushed it home , everything felt smooth so was happy with that, put on the pinion nut and tightened to the previously made mark for the pre-load , attached the prop shaft back on , filled with new oil and put back everything i had removed to do the job while cleaning up all the old leaked oil in the process , job done
then onto the front of the car, the most important item was the failed nearside lower ball joint, the seal had failed and the weather had got in making it nasty inside , removal of the brake calliper and the dust shields and the steering arm links gave access to the upright , this is where it started to get hard, as the failed parts needed to come off , i eventually got the lower ball joint off and removed the ABS sensor , this allowed the upright to be removed from the car, and over to my bench vice, i have found its better and easier to hit the stub axle out of the upright rather than trying to fit it in the press, a couple of hard hits with a 5lb lump hammer ensured its removal , offered up the new stub axle and tightened up the taper fit , i then fitted the new lower ball joint to the upright and took it back to the car, this is where it all went to hell in a hat when i discovered that the ball joint nut wouldn't fit ( as described in the other thread ) , a trip to Allcap where i bought x20 9/16 UNF nuts ( minimum spend £5 lol )
It all then went back together quite well , even if it was a lot of hard wrenching of 3/4 bolts for the suspension , thank goodness that side was done, now onto the other side, lol
But , all this work was required for it to be safe let alone the MOT , so a necessity which in my own sadistic way i enjoyed ,
BB
