Fiddly diddly stuff....

Jan chose the title for todays post :-) Draw what conclusions you want.

Worked on the cage today repairing the damage when some brilliant sole decided it needed cut.  Bent the piece out yesterday and welded it up this morning when the wind was calm.  then ground it down and made it look purdy.

Made a stand for pushing the stub axle out of the hub, tried yesterday but my impromptu stand was collapsing, not a good look when your dealing with irreplaceable parts.  So today I made a support that Chuck Norris would be proud of to hold the hub in place while the 12 ton press pushed it out.

Victorious stand, looks like a one holer?

Cage ready for some love

Bottom cage piece with crack that I'll weld up. Got damaged by jacking up the rear end without appropriate block to take the load.

Purdy new cage, now just need to clean up all the other sh... stuff, yeah stuff, that's what I meant to say....

Placed and order with SNG today, they love you Michelle.  Monday will continue the cleaning process and decide what to do about the calipers, I think we should send them of and have them re-sleeved so we don't ever have to think about them again.
Cheers.


7 hr

Same ole same ole....

Oh, the glamor of being a jaguar mechanic, dirt and grease and more dirt ;-)

Today worked on completing the disassembly of the IRS.  Sometimes you win and sometimes your loose, the hub broke my stand when I tried to disassemble it so will try to make a more substantial stand/holder tomorrow.  The hub came apart from the axle readily so I knew something must be getting ready to bite me...

Using the hub puller again, what a neat tool!

A small amount of the debris

The IRS cage with everything removed except for the 'Pumpkin'

Did I mention I hate cleaning?

Parts bins, red=right R-R Right?

Pumpkin separated from the cage

Why oh why?  Don't know why a PO did this but I'm going to fix it!

Will weld it up in the morning when it's not so windy

It's much easier to just bite the bullet with these bushing sleeves and make two cuts, the sleeve almost dropped out, just make sure your wearing your reading glasses so you don't cut into the other stuff.

Here's the pumpkin, oop's don't look it's taking a leak...

Nasty black fluid, but at least it had fluid. PS: it's heavy, but it's not my brother...

That's all folks,

Cheers

8 hrs

Tearing the IRS down

Today was spent disassembling the right side of the IRS.  Recall that this was started because we saw the brake rotor which was covered in some sort of fluid, either brake fluid or differential oil.  After I removed the brake caliper and inspected it for leaks I've come to the conclusion that the slop on the brake rotor was 90 wt gear oil from the differential.  

Todays pictures chronicle the tear down of the sub-components of the rear suspension,  tomorrow I'll start the tear down of the other side of the unit. 

Stand that I made to support the hub for pressing out the stub axle, will replace the seals and re-grease the bearings if they look OK once their cleaned

12 Ton press used to push out the stub axle seen below

Pulling the bearing off the stub axle to get to the seal 

The brake caliper was supposed to come right out, unfortunately the caliper has to be disassembled to allow it to com out the 'port hole'.

Decided to remove the remnants of the bushings from the control arms, they are pressed in and often rusted into one piece, when this happens the metal shell has to be cut to make it so it can be driven out, but one has to be very careful not to cut the control arm

Driving the metal sleeve out 

second cut to get it so it would fold in on itself

Finally 'dropped' out

Now the same thing on the little end

the two bushes, will clean up the control arm, paint it and press in the new bushes 

This shot is for Drew :-)

Well, that concludes todays adventures.  Need to continue the disassembly of the left side and order some parts. Lot's of parts cleaning in my future :-(

Cheers

6hr

With a little help from my friends....

Today was just a half day as I had a dental appointment this morning:-(  

Worked on disassembly this afternoon and had my buddy Terry T. drop by for a little while, he provided some much needed stability and we were able to get the hub off on the passenger side.  Still can't tell if it's the caliper or the differential that is leaking all over the rotor but beginning to think it's the differential seal.  Tomorrow I'll have the caliper off and able to closely inspect it for leaks.

Picture of the hub after it's been removed, they used a lock type substance at the factory between the hub and the shaft so these are notoriously difficult to remove and require the 'Churchill' tool that is in the left upper corner.  It threads on the hub and the threaded'T' handle is used to push the shaft out. 

The parts as they have been removed, shocks look 'iffy'

From the backside showing half of the assembly laying on the floor in front of the cage.

Thanks for the help Terry,
Cheers

Back in the breach... or perhaps back from the beach...

We returned home from the California Coastal Oil Leak last Tuesday covering ~2700 miles, not the record as Drew and Mary Scherz drove from Austin Texas and covered close to 5000 miles.  The tour was incredible with beautiful scenery, great people, twisty roads and good food! Maybe next year Michelle and RJ will want to join us? (How's that for a lead in?)

Back in the day the day shops figured 6 hours to drop the IRS on one of these cars and I got it down in 4 :-)  Once again I wish I had a steam cleaner so I could just get the crap off of it.  This is very likely the first time this unit has been out of the car so fewer bodges except for where some doofus decided to cut the IRS cage on the back.  I haven't a clue why they did that unless they thought it would make it easier to get to the fill plug on the differential, completely unnecessary with the right tool, an 8 point socket!

This is the forward control arm, these have a rubber bushing that has a metal cap that is typically fused to the mount by years of rust and this car was no exception!

Well, this is a blurry view of the control arm.  The rubber had to be cut out so that I could get to the cap attached to the body, I used a drill to cut the perished rubber than prised it down.  What I didn't take pictures of was cutting the cap loose from the body.  When this goes back on there will be plenty of anti-seize on it so the next person doesn't have to chisel it off.

Supporting the IRS and getting ready to lower the unit

Down!  

Years of crud, if you look closely you can see the rotor on the right is coated with brake fluid

After about 2 hours of scraping and brushing and vacuuming. Doesn't look much different does it? 

Now if you've stuck around this long here is a little treat for you, turn off your volume as there is a lot of wind noise but here are a couple of videos from the trip