Hi all,
It would appear that the rear wheel bearing on my '95 Jag XJ6 is playing up. The wheel rotates and wobbles very nicely when the wheel is turned with the car jacked up, and it's backed up by a lovely scraping sound.

Question is: what's involved in the job of doing it? I'm used to older machinery from the 50s and 60s so am unaware of whether or not any special tools etc are required. Please can someone describe the job to me before I begin to undertake it myself! I have a rear wheel bearing kit here, is this all I need?

Rgds
Richard

 

Sorry, also meant to mention that I can't feel any play in the bearing when it's jacked up, but is this related to the LSD?

 

I did one side on mine. It was pretty straightforward. I can't remember enough minute details to give you an actual step by step but, in a very brief nutshell.....

Remove caliper and bracket, displace caliper out of the way. Disconnect parking brake cable. Remove axle nut. Let hub rotate downward and support on a big piece of wood. Drive out seals, bearings and bearing cups, install new, greased cups, bearings, and seals. Hope that the new parts are close enough, dimensionally, to the old so that re-shimming the end float isn't required (I got lucky with mine). The parking brake cable has an oddball, hard-to-see coupling that's a bit fiddly. I had a very hard time driving out the bearing cups....very tight on my car. Took about 4 hours as I recall.

The workshop manual spells it out nicely. I'd get one if you don't already have it.

My usual Jag vendor sells an all-in-one kit with all the parts needed.

Hope this gives you a rough idea of the job.

Oh...one more thing...my hub/carrier disengaged from the drive axle easily but you might need a puller.

Cheers
DD

 

Since it is the rear of the car, I thought it'd be good to check if there is no vertical play (12 & 6 o'clock positions) in the wheel. If so, it'd be the diff bearings which our cars are known as having problems with.

 

Hi chaps, cheers for the replies.

The reason I think it's an outer bearing is because when the car is jacked up and drive is engaged, the wheel looks as if it's very out of balance! However, it seems to be a very true wheel so I put this movement down to the outer bearing. Do we all think this is the correct assumption, or could it be something else?

I can't feel any obvious play, but again, is this down to the LSD?

 

I'm beginning to wonder if you have a bent wheel. That wouldn't account for the noise, though.

I'll have to do some mulling.

Cheers
DD

 

A bent wheel wouldn't account for the noise, but a bad tire would. I had that problem a few months ago in the front.