Almost all the rear suspension joints on my 2008 XKR (105Kmiles) were split. I'm usually an Audi guy and I'm used to the occasional split joint, but for all them to be bad seems a bit weird.
But then, I've only had the car a few weeks and maybe the previous owner was into joint cutting.
Anyway, decided to replace them all and as I've just finished maybe someone else can benefit from my experience.
My second side definitely took half the time of the first side. ( I would mention how long it took but then I would be embarrassed by all the guys who apparently can replace all the control arms in between their evening supper and dessert!!)

The cost of the upper arms, lower arms, toe links, stabilizer links came to around $650.

There’s a lot of Chinese parts there but I used the better quality MevoTech lower arms.

The upper arm has the brake line going thru the center of it so you need to disconnect the brake line at the caliper. I disconnected mine very briefly right as I was swapping in the new arm to limit the amount of air getting in the line and quickly reconnected it. But of course you still have to bleed the brakes. Just not so extensively.

If you’re doing this in your home garage, it really helps to get the car up high. I jacked mine up in a couple of stages using some wood to get the car nice and high. There’s nothing very difficult about the top arm except it’s a bit fiddly with the access.

With the lower arm you have to take the brake caliper off. Why? That’s what I asked too. Cuz it looks like the arm would come right out. Unfortunately the long bolt at the knuckle is put in at an angle and won’t come out all the way because it hits the rotor. You have to remove the caliper to remove the rotor. Not only that, the parking brake caliper has to come off too. So make sure your parking brake is off first. If your rotor is worn like mine, then it will have a ridge on the very outside that the pads won’t clear unless they’re retracted a bit. I actually (May the Queen forgive me) filed my ridge down a little on both sides so both calipers could be tapped off once the bolts were undone. The rotor has these two silly one-way clips around the wheel studs. I used a couple of picks to pry them off as a screwdriver didn’t work very well.

Also with the lower arm, the forward bolt doesn’t clear the chassis when you try to pull it out. The trick (is not to smack the chassis with a hammer (I would never do that!! And the marks on the RHS must have been done by someone else!!) but is to remove the other bolt first and the flex joint from the knuckle, then twist the whole arm just a few degrees and the bolt will then clear.

Remember, you’re not supposed to tighten everything back up until you have the weight of the car on the wheel. Of course, that’s not happening because with the wheel on you have no access. So I just jacked up the hub nice and high to simulate a compressed suspension and then torqued away.

Toe links/lateral arms: These are the straight adjustable rods that set the toe-in. I got some really high quality ones from Dorman that I’m sure come right from the Shanghai branch of the Coventry factory. Anyway, the access to the inner end is a pain because you have to hold the hex end while you tighten the lock nut. And my lock nut was super-locky. I took it off, added some grease and tightened it up all the way down on the bench to loosen it a bit first. At the other end you might think that the joint angle is all wrong and won’t slide into the gap in the knuckle but first simply put a bolt in the end joint and twist. You can set the angle however you want.

Of course you have to make sure these toe links/lateral arms are adjusted to be the same length as your old ones. I put the old and new one side by side with a long bolt going thru the outer joint of both of them and then adjusted the other end until they were exactly level.

Critical to this job was some 7mm and 8mm wrenches/sockets to hold the center of the spinning joints and open 17mm and 18mm style sockets (the kind that lets you insert something in the center).

The quick torque settings (if you can get access with a torque wrench - ha, ha) are:

Stabiliser Link bars 48NM

Upper arm to body 97NM

Upper arm to knuckle 90NM

Toe link to frame 90NM

Toe link to knuckle 55NM

Lower arm to body 164NM

Lower Arm to knuckle 150NM

Shock absorber to lower arm 133NM

Brake caliper bolts 103NM

OK, hope that helps someone.

Mark

 

Mark,

Good write-up.

Two points I'd make:
1. the OE suspension arms are manufactured by Lemforder and these are available from aftermarket sources at significantly lower cost than from Jaguar.
2. the copper crush washer on the brake hose union is NOT re-usable and should be replaced whenever the banjo connection is disturbed.

Graham

 

Good write-up. I also had a situation where almost every boot/bush was cracked or wallered out. It's an age thing. I also used Mevotech arms when I did mine, and have no complaints about them so far. They seemed to be identical in weight and dimension to the OEM parts I removed. Most of them also included new nuts. (sorry I don't remember which ones didn't, but I did end up reusing a couple of nuts.)

One thing I did was remove the wheels and re-torque everything after the short (about 5-mile) drive from the shop to my house, mainly because I couldn't remember doing one specific torque. I'm glad that I did, as several of those bolts took another couple of clicks.

 

Good points Graham. I did re-use my crush washers so I'll keep a check on the connection until I can replace them.

 

What is the indicator that these need to be replaced?

 

My joints were mostly split with the grease oozing out. Aside from any performance issues, where I live in Northern VA, this will fail a safety inspection.
The bigger joints where the control arms attach to the frame usually end up with cracked rubber. Not all mine were cracked and it's not always easy to see until the joint is flexed. The difference between an old joint and a new one for the smaller swivel joints like on the end of a Tie rod, is that the new ones will also be much stiffer.

 

Thanks! Will keep my eyes peeled, only have 70,000 miles now.

 

I did NOT have to remove Caliper or Rotor to replace lower arm?!?

 

Yes, I can see that would be possible IF the long bolt was attached the other way around, i.e. with the nut to the front of the car. Of course, this would be a much more sensible way to construct the suspension from a maintenance point of view. I assume that all these bolts are placed with the head facing forward as a safety thing, that if the bolt ever came lose it would be less likely to drop out. (Seems like a highly unlikely possibility to me) Audi's are placed the same way in the front suspension as is my daughter's 5 series BMW.

 

Great info thanks Mark, mine has done the same so I'll be reading over what you have said a few times before getting into it. I have only had the car for 9 months and its a low mileage car so I was a bit shocked to see all the rubber boots split. I thought some gorilla may have had the back suspension out and damaged the rubbers but when I pealed some rubber off one of the split boots saw they were perished.

Seems a shame to have to replace the joints at only 50,000 km just because of the rubbers, has anyone tried getting the joints re booted?

 

Great work. Where did you get the torque values from? I'm planning to do the front upper control arms but I can't find the torque values.

 

Great write up

Don't forget the alignment adjust after all that suspension work.

 

The torque values come from the X150 4.2 Service Manual. I found a PDF version on line for around $30 I think. (I'm sure there's free versions out there too.)
For the front suspension the upper arms to body are 60NM. To the knuckle 90NM. Shock absorber top nuts are 27NM. The shock absorber bottom big Torx bolt is 175NM. Stabilizer link nuts are 43NM.
The forward lower arm is 60NM + 135degrees and the 14mm bolt is 175Nm. (Only one of these needs to come off if you're not replacing the arm )

RE: Getting joints rebooted. Sounds like a great idea but I've never heard of it. I know you can press the rubber joints out with a press, but if you don't have a press and you have to pay someone to do it, the cost saving is not huge.

 

The free version is in the stickys at the top of this forum, as is the electrical guide.

 

Thank you kind sir. I've got the Motorcraft upper control arm. Just need to have a spare wet weekend to change them over. Do you know if the front suspension strut needs to be loosen/removed to get to the bolts attached to the body?

 

Yes. Because the bolts are too long to pull out otherwise. But the strut is not hard to extract. Getting at the nut by the side of the coolant reservoir was fiddly because my reservoir wouldn't come out.

 

I checked on the crush washer for the rear brakes. Jaguar parts sites say C2C31805 will not fit my 07 base. I can't find a part number in the EPC.

 

Dorman part 66272 for the crush washers

 

I am replacing the lower rear control arms on my 2007 XK with 96K miles. I started with the left rear corner and got the old part out OK. When installing the new left rear control arm part, I encountered a problem that the bottom of the knuckle is around 1" away from the control arm bushing. How do I move the knuckle towards the control arm so that the bolt can be inserted? Please see photos of the vehicle as well as a photo of the Lemforder replacement part label; the part came from FCP Euro. Thanks!

 

@Patrick Wong the pic is too close up. Is the stabilizer link disconnected still? If not it will need to be and perhaps the ball joint on the A-arm. Apparently something shifted upon removal?
Also Shock mount bolt is not in yet correct?