Warning to those who genuflect before the leaper; THIS IS RANT! I'm pissed!
Who in their right mind would design a rear suspension so unserviceable?
Are there only cretins in the suspension design department at Coventry?
Do said cretins have a grudge against mechanics?
WTF! were they thinking? Would it have killed them to make a common wear item serviceable without dismantling the whole GD car?

Let's not forget to put a few long bolts of that good British steel through a tight sleeve in the lower control arm to corrode and expand.
IF I EVER GET TO BE KING I will find the dimwits responsible and sentence them to servicing shock absorbers(dampers)until they cry for their mums, every day until they die.

 

Hmmm. I have expressed the same sentiments, although a bit more diplomatically. I agree it is a poor design, and when the manual says remove the whole rear suspension, it's even worse.
However, do some research on this site and you'll find ways to change the shocks without disassembling the whole works.
Ranting against the mighty Jag will never make you popular here, but people can't have blinders on either, thinking everything Jag did was a work of art.

 

Trust me, I dismantled as little as possible.
Poor design indeed.

Anyone here with an open mind who has wrenched on their own car will understand as you do. I'm not here to worship but to learn and share what I've learned about these cars, good and bad.

 

Well at least it wasn't one of the quad shock, inboard disc models

 

...which just happen to be the all-time favorite independent rear suspension of choice of custom hot rod builders...

Most of the problems we have servicing the Jag rear ends are the result of corrosion, which can generally be prevented by coating the unthreaded shoulder of the long bolts with copper grease. But knowing that doesn't make it any more fun to deal with siezed shock bolt or wishbone pivot bolt.

As any BMW owner-mechanic will attest, superior performance often comes at a cost of more difficult serviceability. Jaguar's suspensions are famous for a reason: they have consistently outperformed their contemporaneous competition in terms of their balance of excellent handling and excellent ride.

Cheers,

Don

 

Hi Don,
As a long time BMW owner and servicer I'll respectfully disagree with both points above. Familiarity has something to do with it but I cannot think of a single service I have performed on my X308 vs. the contemporary E32/E34/E39 BMW chassis' that is easier on the Jag.
The X308 has the turning radius of a barge and wallows on the road by comparison to the above Germans. My old shocks seemed good when removed, the new shocks I installed didn't improve the ride, ANY. Ride is subjective to one's tastes, handling is not. Any of the above Bavarians will run circles around my X308.


Your corrosion point is well taken. It would have been nice if JAG had put a bit of anti-corrosion paste on those long bolts through the control arm. My car lived in Texas and has not been on salted roads since here in Chicago yet one of those 8" bolts managed to seize itself in there. Design issue? It's a big surface area available to be seized in there. At least they didn't use dis-similar metals. Materials issue? Probably not, the actual corrosion wasn't severe, it was the long surface that made the bond difficult to break. Build issue? Yes, a penny's worth of copper paste as you've stated would have prevented this in anything but extreme conditions.

 

I probably should have included the adjective "expensive" when describing the servicing of higher-performance vehicles. Regarding our own E46 BMW, replacing the front lower ball joints might arguably be "as easy" as on an X308, but there are two balljoints per side, and the balljoints are pressed into the control arm and are not offered separately, and BMW wanted $300.00 per side just for the parts. I realize that on the X308 the situation is similar with the lower ball joint pressed into the control arm. I much prefer replacing the balljoints on our XJ40 at $25 each. I recently helped a friend swap suspension parts between two E46s and it was surprisingly more challenging than I had anticipated. And don't get me started about the plastic cooling system, the inexcusably weak plastic shaft of the DISA valve, the PS fluid reservoir that vents fluid down the front of the engine by design, etc.


I agree that the turning radius of Jag saloons through X308 is far too large for a rear wheel drive vehicle. However, I don't believe any well-sorted Jag saloon should wallow on the road, so perhaps your suspension bushes need attention (replacing all of them in our XJ40 made a world of difference - our '04 is already in need of some front bushes).

I've driven several BMW 3, 5 and 7 series cars, Mercedes E and S class cars, a late '80s Rolls Royce Silver Spur, an '05 Bentley Continental GT, a Jaguar Series III, two XJ40s, two X300s, an X308, and our X350 XJR. I would submit this analyisis: a Jag saloon handles nearly as well as a 7 series (no, the steering is nowhere near as good, but the actual cornering ability is), but its ride is vastly superior to the BMW in terms of comfort and control of road imperfections. Compared to the Rolls Royce I drove, the ride of a well-sorted Jag saloon is actually very close, which is especially surprising given that the Rolls weighs about a ton more (literally), but a Jag's handling is vastly superior. In my opinion, the Jag suspension provides a unique balance of handling and comfort that combines qualities of BMW, Mercedes, RR and Bentley. Since automotive design is always limited by unavoidable compromises, I think Jaguar saloons offer a unique and highly successful balance. For carving a canyon, the BMW is obviously far better, but for eating up endless miles in effortless comfort, the Jag is hard to beat.

And just to complete my comparisons, my brother-in-law recenty purchased an '05 Bentely Continental GT Mulliner Edition, and he let me have the keys for 30 miles or so on some Indiana backroads. I have to admit, it is a very special automobile, but it ought to be, at $75K for a 9-year-old car. With a 550 hp W-12 engine, it scoots, and the ride and handling on the Yokohama ADVAN Sports is amazing for a 5,000 pound vehicle. We pulled back into his drive, then got into our '04 XJR and headed back out to retrieve some pizzas about 5 miles away. You know what? The Jag accelerates nearly as well, its handling is very similar and its ride is just a bit more harsh (on 19 inch wheels shod with incorrect Pirelli Scorpions). My brother-in-law agreed that for the less than $10K I paid, the performance was very close to the Bentley. (Oh, and the specialist dealer that sold him the Bentley warned him that whenever it needed repairs or maintenance, to "mutliply the typical costs by three"....). Once again I was reminded that Jaguar saloons are incredible bargains!

Cheers,

Don

 

In my opinion to work on a jag is much easy compare to Audi.
BMW old models are OK but some say that the newer models after 2010 are horrible. To change the timing chain to a 320d you must take the engine out or the gear box. The timing chain is to the back of the engine not in front of the engine he he.
About the rust? The German car are better in my opinion.

 

Having done a rear shock job on my old X300 I can appreciate the frustration - One bolt came out with a little, er, persuasion, the other I had to drill out some of the shock bush eye to get it out. The shocks were junk anyway and the replacement bolt was not expensive so in the end not too bad for a 15+ year old car. I don't believe you'll find a tin of copper grease in any car factory anywhere, these days especially cars are not manufactured with the home mechanic in mind (ball joints pressed in is an example) - our works van ( a Citroen) needed anti-roll bar bushes recently and , you guessed it - they were not available as a separate item so a complete roll bar with pre-fitted bushes had to be fitted - bloody ridiculous, at least most of the XJ8 perishable parts can be obtained as needed and fitted with relatively little hassle.... corrosion aside these are still not too difficult to work on and most of our cars are now approaching 16 years old - how many 16 year old cars do you even see on the roads now.....?

 

Don,
I'm well aware of BMW's weaker components, I could add quite a few as well, are at least generally accessible as are wear parts. They did manage to make the truly difficult to replace parts robust enough that servicing is seldom an issue and wear parts are usually easy. For example, I can change a fuel pump in my BM in minutes on the side of the road and have done so after 253k miles of use. Not so in the X308 at 77k.

The BMW ball joints are indeed integral with the control arm and not available or serviceable separately. The rubber bushing usually fails at around 100-120k miles and is serviceable. Unless the grease boot tears the ball joints(control arm) usually outlast the bushes.
I seem to recall some rather pricey rubber biscuits for the front shocks on the X308. JUST rubber biscuits for the top shock mount that cost how much? They turn to dust in how many miles?
Smart money buys GOOD aftermarket parts for any marque. Lemforder or Moog suit BMW suspensions. I do my own servicing. The control arms for an E46 cost less than $200 a side, each has two ball joints and a bushing. Refreshing them essentially renews(less the strut mount @ ~$40) the entire front suspension attachment. I'd be pleased to share resources for your BMW needs. The E46 chassis is still DIY friendly if you are so inclined.


We all know that taking any car into the dealer for servicing is a sure way to pay a high price and is no assurance, especially on older models, for superior service. The manufacturer Uro, google them at your leisure, is to be an "OE" supplier to Jaguar for their older models so not even parts would be better quality.

 

Hi Ross,

I do my own servicing as well. For the BMW control arms I opted for a kit by Meyle with replaceable ball joints. The kit came from Bav Auto and included the control arm bushings at $300 for both sides. There certainly are lots of good sources for OEM or better parts for the BMW, but the same is true for Jaguar if you shop around. I've had mixed results with Üro Parts. Some parts have been excellent OEM or equal, others have been sub-par or even unserviceable. A recent example was a driveshaft flexible coupling ("Jurid" or "Giubo") for our '93 which wouldn't balance in any of the six bolt positions in either of the face positions (I tried all 12 possibilities). I had to send it back and order an OEM part from GKN, which worked on the first try.

Cheers,

Don

 

..... the mechanics of the car is the price you pay!

 

So please tell us how you really feel.

 

Audi is worse! Much worse!

 

The Jaguar x308 is car evolution. Starting in the early 60's -- It was not designed to be cheap to fix .. it was designed to work and work with a low trunk line .. and it does.

It was .. design a great looking car and then make it work - not MB's form follows function .. although I did love the 108's and 109's


You can't look at a 1998 X308 the same way as a 98 MB or BMW.

 

After working on various British cars (mostly Lotus and MG) as a hobby, and as an aircraft mechanic (as an avocation) for many years (now in IT...how's that again? Started as a radio announcer out of college...long story...), all mfrs make designs that, in the cold light of actual use, are ....ummm....less than satisfactory?

Found some beauts in general aviation...like one airframe that, to remove the oil filter (mounted high on the back of a 6-cylinder Lycoming engine...yeah, that keeps the back Real Clean when you finally do remove it), you had to remove a dished closure plate on the firewall and pull the filter off INTO the interior front luggage compartment of the bird. Whiskey tango foxtrot?

FWIW, the 71 Europa I put together 7 years ago, when a steel long bolt went through a flange or aluminium casting...copaslip was used on the unthreaded portion to make sure everything stayed friendly. Nylock nuts copiously applied (even where the originals were plain...that nylon seal does help keep the threads nice inside the nut). Figure the next owner will appreciate the thought.

Looking forward (yeah, right?) to tackling, at some point, the rear of my cat. Will get the same treatment. Just have to remember, these cars, like most others, aren't Rolexes...they're Timex movements in a Rolex case...