Dropped the rack and have removed the retaining circular clip in the tower that holds the seal down. Trying to just replace the rubber seal but the old one was effectively fused to the steel washer beneath it so there was no way for me to just pop out the old seal and put the new one in.

Tried prying the washer of with the seal (figured they were fused so they would come together), but the rubber broke off in chunks - see picture below.

I know it’s possible to force compressed air through one of the lines to pop it out but I’m afraid that may hurt something and I don’t have easy access to compressed air.

The Jag book says to “pry it out”. I’ve tried as much using the tiniest flat blade screwdriver with no success.

Any tricks to this?

 

Ok figured that part out but now more confusion. The book mentions a circlip, a nylon washer, and the pinion seal.

I removed the circlip, check.

I removed the washer BUT the washer had rubber on top of it. The book makes no mention of any such rubber as a separate piece so now I’m wondering if the OE washer has rubber fused to the top of it or if mine was some generic thing someone installed a long time ago.

Beneath the washer of course is the pinion seal. Old one matches the new one. All good there.

As always I recorded a video for visual aid.

 

I need to do the same thing. So how did you finally get that seal out- more prying? Looking forward to the answer to your questions,

 

I ended up using a bike pump (the kind that stands on its own, not one of the little hand-held things).

I'll try to remember to measure the ID and OD of the hose tonight.

 

Just to clarify my question in Post #2: What is the part # for the washer? And does the OE one have rubber fused on it? I've looked all over the internet & the usual suppliers (SNG, Moss Motors, etc.) and can't locate a part # specific to that item. I wonder if it would be okay for me to salvage the metal part of the washer and install a generic rubber washer on top - they wouldn't be fused to together but they would be forced together pretty snugly to give clearance for the circlip.

I guess whether or not I can go that route all depends on the answer to this: what really does the job of sealing the PS fluid in the tower? The pinion aka "tower" seal or the tower seal and the aforementioned washer? I have the OE tower seal, so that part is covered.

 

Ok for anyone who stumbles upon this thread and wants to know: Dan w/ Moss Motors was a huge help and managed to locate the washer in a printed diagram he had in an old XJS parts catalog. Here's the pic he sent me (I've circled the washer):



As he explained it, anything notated "NSS 1" is included in the AAU1503 steering rack rebuild kit, so it appears that while Jag sold the pinion seal by itself, they never sold the washer by itself.

 

MrAndersonGCC,

All of the parts diagrams for XJ-S & XJS are on Jaguar's parts website.

Some of those individual washers, seals, clips etc were originally sold separately with discrete part numbers on XJ-S HE racks etc. However, they may not have been made available separately for certain types of previous XJ-S racks. You don't mention your year and model in a signature and I don't recall you mentioning in any of your posts exactly which XJS you have?

If you let us know what car you've got, I can send you a link to the right area in Jaguar's parts website.

Cheers

Paul

 

Hi Paul,

Mine is a 1983 XJS V12 (well, a prior owner put a SBC 350 in it a long time ago, but that doesn't matter on this job). Thanks!

 

Just wanted to wrap up this thread for anyone who finds this in the future. Here's what I did, and it seems to be working well. See prior posts; the issue was the metal-rubber washer getting beat up such that the old rubber had been reduced to bits and pieces stuck to the metal washer. I retained the old washer and got rid of the rubber remnants using a dremel tool - you shouldn't have to do this if your old rubber is intact, but mine definitely was not. If your old rubber was intact, congrats - you can stop reading now.

The purpose of this washer is simply to keep pressure on the pinion seal beneath it, not to act as a secondary seal itself. So the rubber encasing the metal washer is only important in so far as it adds a tiny bit of thickness to the washer.

If you remove the rubber without adding something back in, you may end up with insufficient downward pressure on the pinion seal and your rack tower may resume leaking despite a new pinion seal.

To avoid this, I added a neoprene washer on top of the metal one. You can purchase these at Home Depot in the hardware aisle in the "specialty" section. I suspect you may be able to get away with simply replacing the old washer with a new metal one that is slightly thicker, but I prefer my method since neoprene has some "give" - if you opt to just use a thicker metal washer, it may be so thick that the increased downward pressure could result in premature wear on the pinion seal.

That said, my method of adding a neoprene washer on top of the metal one also adds more thickness than there was in the past, and thus more downward pressure on the pinion seal. Who knows - this may also lead to premature wear on the pinion seal down the road, but I won't know for hopefully a long time.

Two side notes:

1) Home Depot doesn't have a huge selection of neoprene washers. I purchased a pack that had the correct outer diameter (which escapes me now), but the inner diameter was too small. Just cut out the middle so that it fits around the shaft. Remember - the neoprene washer's only job is to add some downward force, it's not there to act as a seal itself so its ID doesn't need to perfectly match that of the steering shaft.

2) I soaked the new pinion seal in Lucas Power Steering Stop Leak fluid for a couple minutes. No idea if this will make a difference in the future or not, but I figured it doesn't hurt.