It didn't take me long to work out that the front coil springs were a bit too dangerous to mess with. The Haynes manual describes a special tool that inserts inside the coil from below and can be used to compress the unit. These are hard to get hold of and your standard external compressors are very difficult to fit on the Jaguar as the coils are fairly well enclosed by the subframe . So, another trip to my mates at Capricorn Engineering who promptly removed the offending coils with a cutting torch.
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| Chris Youren from Capricorn |
Once the coils were removed I could carry on dismantling the various bits. The front brakes callipers were easy to remove but the disks were badly corroded to the hubs and I ended up removing the disks/hubs together and then soaking in WD40 prior to using the big hammer.
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| Dead coil springs! |
The next problem was separating the top and bottom ball joints to release the front uprights. As usual one was easy but three of them fought back. One of the lower ball joint nuts had to be sawn off and the tapers were broken by heating up the joints with a gas torch.
Finally its a case of removing the top and bottom fulcrum shafts to release the wishbones. The lower fulcrum bolt requires a 38mm socket to remove and once again, the bolts need to be retained for the rebuild.
So after two weeks elapsed, I finally had all the parts I needed to take to AK for exchange which was just as well as my kit delivery date had arrived!
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