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It is apparent that there is a lot of history in the Forum on this adventure. It appears that by the time you get the parts, assuming I replace the springs, I am at about $575 USD. This being a daily driver with almost 90,000 miles, I don't want the car laid up for a week or more while I fumble through the process. Not that I am totally inept at mechanics (having just replaced the starter and the anti sway bar bushes, did a repair on the shift cable, repaired a vacuum leak and a few other fun ventures), but it is a matter of time. Hence, I may have a fellow British car owner who is good at British and Italian cars lend a hand - at a cost. Any idea how many hours it would take to do both sides replacing upper control arm bushes, lower control arm bush, springs, upper shock mounts, and anti sway bar links?
My wife is saying just replace the car with a '07 or so XK. Not often that one has a partner (wife) that says "just go buy a car".
So I guess the question is is a car with 90,000 miles worth putting another $1,200 into rebuilding the front end?
It is apparent that there is a lot of history in the Forum on this adventure. It appears that by the time you get the parts, assuming I replace the springs, I am at about $575 USD. This being a daily driver with almost 90,000 miles, I don't want the car laid up for a week or more while I fumble through the process. Not that I am totally inept at mechanics (having just replaced the starter and the anti sway bar bushes, did a repair on the shift cable, repaired a vacuum leak and a few other fun ventures), but it is a matter of time. Hence, I may have a fellow British car owner who is good at British and Italian cars lend a hand - at a cost. Any idea how many hours it would take to do both sides replacing upper control arm bushes, lower control arm bush, springs, upper shock mounts, and anti sway bar links?
My wife is saying just replace the car with a '07 or so XK. Not often that one has a partner (wife) that says "just go buy a car".
So I guess the question is is a car with 90,000 miles worth putting another $1,200 into rebuilding the front end?
Yes it's worth it...
Keep her as a project AND get the newer XK...?
Just know, there will be *work* (that I personally enjoy/love) there too... I don't think one has one of these cars,,, without a certain kind of love of them....
Love the car - I do, I would not have put up with a lot of the things I have address thus far and if I didn't, I wouldn't consider doing this work. BOTH newer car and keep the current, well I will say my wife loves me, but not sure that much. And she loves the XK8 to.
love the car - i do, i would not have put up with a lot of the things i have address thus far and if i didn't, i wouldn't consider doing this work. Both newer car and keep the current, well i will say my wife loves me, but not sure that much. And she loves the xk8 to.
...Any idea how many hours it would take to do both sides replacing upper control arm bushes, lower control arm bush, springs, upper shock mounts, and anti sway bar links? ...
Are you sure you really need lower control arm bushings? Those seem to last a lot longer than the other areas.
If so then that is a much bigger job, requiring a 20 ton press, and you might as well do the ball joints since you have to separate them anyway and they are cheap enough. And since you would be using a press anyway it would probably be smart to do the wheel bearings then as well.
About time estimates, best case just doing the upper arm bushings, shock mounts and springs would take a first timer between 3-6 hours possibly longer if corrosion is a factor.
You can do the sway bushings separately in about an hour or so.
I've never done lower bushings, ball joints, bearings yet. I would guesstimate 8-10 hours if the required tooling was at hand.
upper bushings, upper shock mounts, new shocks can be done in about 4 hours. As Rothwell mentioned - lowers ARE A MUCH BIGGER BEAST!!!!!! Here is my lower bushing/ball joint saga (about post 19 on). Even with the proper tools - I would say lowers would take about 8 hours each side - it's that much of a pain
as for the question on is this worth it for a daily driver? Hell yeah - you have less than half the mileage on yours than when I did the lowers - at around 180K
The lowers,,, get rid of center rubber and steel,,, cut them while still in the lower arms with a electric jig saw and hack blade,,, use a cold chisel to drive them out after some bending and after having drilled the entire center out with a 1 and 1/4 inch core saw... Don't separate them... Find a large cylinder that fits the flange of the bushing,,, freeze them and heat the orafic of the lower arms... Find a fire hydrant and use a 2 ton jack to press them in....
Everything your saying,,,, a 2 or 3 day job with lots of cursing and swearing - some blood. Pausing and regrouping.
But,,, why the hell would anyone want or need to do everything in one go? Me,,,, I am not a manly kinda man, like that... Some here, some there - she's not going anywhere...
It is apparent that there is a lot of history in the Forum on this adventure. It appears that by the time you get the parts, assuming I replace the springs, I am at about $575 USD. This being a daily driver with almost 90,000 miles, I don't want the car laid up for a week or more while I fumble through the process. Not that I am totally inept at mechanics (having just replaced the starter and the anti sway bar bushes, did a repair on the shift cable, repaired a vacuum leak and a few other fun ventures), but it is a matter of time. Hence, I may have a fellow British car owner who is good at British and Italian cars lend a hand - at a cost. Any idea how many hours it would take to do both sides replacing upper control arm bushes, lower control arm bush, springs, upper shock mounts, and anti sway bar links?
My wife is saying just replace the car with a '07 or so XK. Not often that one has a partner (wife) that says "just go buy a car".
So I guess the question is is a car with 90,000 miles worth putting another $1,200 into rebuilding the front end?
I went in to tackle the upper shock mounts last week.
It is true that the upper bolt is not likely to just fall out.
But I am just a highly determined individual with a jack and a pair of jack stands doing this in my garage.
In my experience, the washers inside of the old bushings will get stuck onto the bolt and stop it from just being able to be slide out easily.
If you are replacing the bushings and don't care about retaining the washers in the old bushings, then you could go into it knowing if you get one that is stuck, cut a slit in it to relieve the friction it can have on the bolt.
This ^ alone will likely make the job from something that could be considered about a medium difficulty back down into something that is easy.
I didn't read all of the articles online that detailed that those washers get stuck, it took me going out and beating on it to figure it out for myself. I sat there and beat the bolts back and forth for a couple hours with a 3lb hammer until they came out.
I would say in my experience from doing it last week, this was my time breakdown:
Jack car up and place on jackstands: 3 minutes
Remove wheel: 1 minute
Remove lower shock mount bolt: 3 minutes ( to find the right wrench lol )
Remove 3 upper shock mount nuts: 1 minute
Remove Upper control arm bolt: 1-2 hours ( the first side i did i just beat the **** out of it and it took forever, the second side i managed to do in an hour or less from what i learned on the other side. I still did it the hard way regardless )
Remove Shock and Strut from vehicle: 1 minute ( Can just weasel it out between the now movable upper control arm.
Compress Spring and replace upper shock mount: 1-2 hours ( the first side I did it myself with rented spring compressors from oreillys. It was a bitch and i ended up not getting the mount on straight and had to take it to a shop to get it fixed. The shop did it for $20 and took them 5 minutes )
Reinstall Shock and Strut into vehicle: 1 minute
Reinstall lower shock mount bolt: 1 minute
Reinstall upper Shock mount nuts: 1 minute
Replace upper control arm bushings with new and reinstall bolt: 5 minutes ( takes a couple minutes to lube everything up and get the washers in place after you keep dropping them on the ground and cursing )
Reinstall wheel: 5 minutes ( i have shitty wheels that don't want to seat properly, probably take you less time )
Overall time for one side of the vehicle: ~2.5hrs - 4.5hrs
Keep in mind that if you get a shop to replace the upper mount for you, you might be able to cut an hour or more off of this estimate.
Also keep in mind that if your upper control arm bolt doesn't come out easily, you may be able to cut the washer that is binding it off of the car. This would save you another hour or two off of this estimate.
Last edited by Mad Hatter; 01-22-2020 at 07:55 PM.
Cut the center guts out with a core saw a little bigger than this one... A little oil for lubbing it up while spinning against the rubber... The steel sleeve is pretty thin... Wouldn't take much to make two long slices while still in the lower, even with a hand saw (go electric). Bang them out with a have a chisel and heavy hammer... You'll 4 out in less than 2 hours I'd bet ya...
The upper wishbone is what can be the nightmare. But not always.
The shocks and stuff. There is a video of a guy using carriage bolts and sockets to pull out and push the lower shock mount bushes in. Again, frozen.
The spring is not bad with a compressor set from an auto zone. Not bad at all. With that,,, it's just the discs up top, easy swap out once the springs are compressed...
Work with a friend. If push comes to shove (and it always does) bring the lowers to a shop to press all 4 bushings in.
Get new concentric bolts ahead of time... The can shear on retightening...Ask me how I know, lol... They are like 20yrs old and have dealt with infinite jarring and jerking - huge forces...
Dude, it's a LOT of work. But you can do it! And it feels good after.
I went in to tackle the upper shock mounts last week.
It is true that the upper bolt is not likely to just fall out.
But I am just a highly determined individual with a jack and a pair of jack stands doing this in my garage.
In my experience, the washers inside of the old bushings will get stuck onto the bolt and stop it from just being able to be slide out easily.
If you are replacing the bushings and don't care about retaining the washers in the old bushings, then you could go into it knowing if you get one that is stuck, cut a slit in it to relieve the friction it can have on the bolt.
This ^ alone will likely make the job from something that could be considered about a medium difficulty back down into something that is easy.
I didn't read all of the articles online that detailed that those washers get stuck, it took me going out and beating on it to figure it out for myself. I sat there and beat the bolts back and forth for a couple hours with a 3lb hammer until they came out.
I would say in my experience from doing it last week, this was my time breakdown:
Jack car up and place on jackstands: 3 minutes
Remove wheel: 1 minute
Remove lower shock mount bolt: 3 minutes ( to find the right wrench lol )
Remove 3 upper shock mount nuts: 1 minute
Remove Upper control arm bolt: 1-2 hours ( the first side i did i just beat the **** out of it and it took forever, the second side i managed to do in an hour or less from what i learned on the other side. I still did it the hard way regardless )
Remove Shock and Strut from vehicle: 1 minute ( Can just weasel it out between the now movable upper control arm.
Compress Spring and replace upper shock mount: 1-2 hours ( the first side I did it myself with rented spring compressors from oreillys. It was a bitch and i ended up not getting the mount on straight and had to take it to a shop to get it fixed. The shop did it for $20 and took them 5 minutes )
Reinstall Shock and Strut into vehicle: 1 minute
Reinstall lower shock mount bolt: 1 minute
Reinstall upper Shock mount nuts: 1 minute
Replace upper control arm bushings with new and reinstall bolt: 5 minutes ( takes a couple minutes to lube everything up and get the washers in place after you keep dropping them on the ground and cursing )
Reinstall wheel: 5 minutes ( i have shitty wheels that don't want to seat properly, probably take you less time )
Overall time for one side of the vehicle: ~2.5hrs - 4.5hrs
Keep in mind that if you get a shop to replace the upper mount for you, you might be able to cut an hour or more off of this estimate.
Also keep in mind that if your upper control arm bolt doesn't come out easily, you may be able to cut the washer that is binding it off of the car. This would save you another hour or two off of this estimate.
KEEP IT! They're awesome cars with terrible resale value. I've got 2, a 97 and a 98, both converts in Carnival red > 55K and 135K miles. In a time crunch, I've had to part swap. Maybe a 'His' and 'Hers' would work. As long as you don't run into problems like frozen nuts and bolts, the repairs shouldn't be more than a Saturday afternoon. I ordered the parts; will be here next week.
My upper shock mounts are definitely shot, but how would you test the shocks to tell if they're bad? Since the car is a 98, would you suggest just replacing the shock anyway? Would you think it would have better performance?
Did the whole front suspension deal a few months ago (aside from ball joints, which seemed in good shape). I'm not sure if there's a surefire way to determine how much any one component is contributing to the notorious front end droop. But, I figured that if I was gonna replace the shock mounts, I might as well replace the shocks and springs as well. The shocks aren't too expensive, and come with new bushings already installed. The springs are expensive if you go OEM, but you can get Suplex ones that are basically identical.
It's not a terribly hard job, but it can get really frustrating. The fulcrum bolts were indeed a pain. Driver's side took me like 3 hours. Passengers side took me about 15 mins. Not really any corrosion, but forces tend to get the bushings and the control arm to exert pressure that makes the bolt hard to slide out.
I ended up having a bad time with the shock mount assembly itself, which, again, isn't hard, but if you don't line things up correctly or if the shock mount gets stuck on the shock rod (which happened to me), things get really annoying really quickly. That freak issue aside, reinstalling was fine. Lubrication is your friend.
My point being: if you can afford to replace something in that assembly, do it. Disassembly and reassembly is not a job you'll want to do more often than absolutely necessary.
As advised above, go ahead and replace the shocks along with the upper shock mounts. They are pushing 22 years old and they have definitely seen better days. We replaced the rear shocks on my wife's 2006 XK8 in October 2014 (at about 84,000 miles) and the front shocks and upper shock mounts in January 2016 (at about 99,000 miles). New shocks are relatively inexpensive, often come with free shipping depending upon where you purchase them, and for my money it was good to get that relatively time-consuming job over and done with. The car handles so much better with new Bilstein shocks, Welsh poly shock mounts, and poly upper control arm bushings. Glad we did it when we did....
Okay, I charged off to obtain the needed parts. Per on of the posts above I contacted British Parts UK. Much to my surprise I received a return email telling me that they are NOT shipping to the States right now. British Parts UK was a place to get all of the parts needed, for a sane price. Is it tariffs? Brexit? Customs? or some other issue. So is there someplace in the States or Canada to get Jaguar parts for an XK8, at a reasonable price?
Okay, I charged off to obtain the needed parts. Per on of the posts above I contacted British Parts UK. Much to my surprise I received a return email telling me that they are NOT shipping to the States right now. British Parts UK was a place to get all of the parts needed, for a sane price. Is it tariffs? Brexit? Customs? or some other issue. So is there someplace in the States or Canada to get Jaguar parts for an XK8, at a reasonable price?
01-22-2020, 03:49 PM
