The ball joints and probably control arm bushings on my MY94 car are shot. I have tried using external coil spring compressors before on various Jaguar cars but they always make me nervous because of the extreme mechanical force required and the inability to get external coil spring compressors to grab the coils reliably. I have even had a couple external coil spring compressors damage the threads on the long bolts on the coil spring compressor tools.

I am looking at the following internal coil spring compressor on ebay and wondering if this would work any better.


internal coil spring compressor
Does anyone here have any comments on whether this might work better?

I would like to get feedback from folks here who have replaced ball joints or control arm bushings before on their XJ40 to see what types of coil spring compressors you used to accomplish the job with ease and safety.

 

Steve if you have "WAY too many Jaguars in Ohio" you should join the Jaguar Clubs of North America (JCNA) either as a member at large or better through a local chapter. As a member you can use the extensive tool loan program https://www.jcna.com/tool-loan The most local club to you may be Detroit but here is the map. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer...ILdnfH44pc&z=6


The tool loan program ONLY offers factory approved and issued tools. Coil spring compressors are one of the items most requested. Remember this is a loan program and not rental. User only pays fro shipping cost.

 

How about the threaded rod method? Slow, but safe and controlled.

You take out each pan bolt replacing it with threaded rod w/a couple of nuts. One bolt at a time till you have all the pan bolts replaced with rods and the nuts snugged up. Then you slacken the bolts in turn, slowly lowering the pan and decompressing the spring.

Larry

 

Hi Steve,

The large images are still down at Jag-Lovers, but you can see the thumbnails and descriptions of the spring compressor I built using a large threaded rod. If I were to build one again, I would forget about drilling the large ball and just use a stack of heavy washers as the thrust device. Standard threaded rod is fine, but Acme threaded rod will make the job go faster. McMaster-Carr carries acme-threaded rod and the high-strength dowel pins I used: I used metric rod because I wanted to use a ratcheting wrench to speed things up and figured I would get more use out of a 30mm ratcheting wrench than a 1-1/4 inch one (and I definitely have).

Don B's Jaguar Spring Compressor

Cheers,

Don

 

Thanks Don
I have written a note to Nick at the Jag-Lover's site to ask about the photo albums.
He referred me to Gunther but I have never heard back from Gunther.
Do you happen to still have the larger copies of these photos from this album anywhere?
It would be much more understandable with the actual photos to go with the text.
Thanks
--
Steve

 

I actually volunteered to help move the photos to the new servers but then got very busy and haven't had time to work on it.

I do have the large images but they're on a hard-drive in an old computer whose motherboard died and I haven't had time to rebuild it. I'll get to it eventually. Sorry!

 

Home built, cheap and easy to build. Worked well on springs.
Ball joints are completely different story, I had a lot of trouble getting old ball joints out, including cutting them to bits, bending separators and eventually drilling out. Same for wishbone bushes, it's not an easy job. One of the hardest things I had to do on a Jag.

More details here:
https://www.xj40.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=998717

 

Looks like a pretty close copy of the actual tool. Much stronger than threaded rod and roll pins though.

 

You definitely do not want to use roll pins, but the solid steel pins katar83 and I used are fine, especially if you get the high strength ones. In the U.S., McMaster-Carr (mcmaster.com) carries pins with breaking strengths exceeding 50,000 psi. The ones I tried first were rated for something like 10,000 psi and they did deform slightly during use. The stronger ones did not deform at all.

McMaster-Carr and other industrial suppliers also carry stronger threaded rod such as Grade 8 SAE or Class 10.9 metric, both of which have a tensile strength of 150,000 psi. The Acme threaded rod is "only" rated for 50,000 psi, but significantly reduces the number of nut rotations required to compress the spring.

 

As Don mentioned, these are way over specced, that dowel pin is crazy strong, the special spacers are actually titanium alloy that my father machined for me(a set of large spacers would work too though), the rod is M18, nothing is going to break anywhere, its thicker/stronger than the spring itself and you could compress the spring to a point where the pan itself would give way at the bottom hole before the compressor would

 

Yesterday I finally got the passenger's side suspension work partially finished that my 1994 XJ6 needs.
A few days ago I removed both brake calipers and rotors because I had looseness in the wheel bearings but I also knew my upper control arm bushings and ball joints were toast as well.
Yesterday I was able to disassemble the passenger's side to get started on this work.
I decided to NOT screw with the coil spring. I just left the shock absorber in place and put a jack under the lower control arm.
Then I removed the three torx head screws that held the backing plate onto the spindle.
Once I had that off I had a clear view of the lower ball joint nut and the four bolts that hold the ball joint into the bottom of the spindle.
I loosened the four lower bolts and then removed the main nut.
Using a little persuasion I was able to get the lower ball joint to pop out of of the end of the lower control arm.
Next I removed the nut from the upper ball joint and got the tapper to pop out of the spindle.
I unbolted the upper ball joint from the ends of the upper control arms and made sure to note where the shims were positioned.
Then I loosened the nut on the long bolt that attaches the inner ends of the upper control arm to the crossmember.
I was able to slide this bolt forward enough to allow me to remove the two parts of the upper control arm.
This left me with this:

upper bushings and ball joints removed

I took those arms over to my big bench vise and was able to clamp the ends of the inner bushing sleeve into the bench vise and twist on the arm to remove the inner part of the bushing from the arm.
I carefully used a hacksaw to make a couple of cuts in the remaining part of the bushing that was still stuck in the end of each arm so I could get the outer part of the bushing to slide out of the arm.
Here is a photo of all of the old parts I replaced:

old ball joints and upper control arm bushings

After cleaning up the inside of the hole in the arm with a wire brush, I was able to use the bench vise again to press the new bushings back into the arm.
Once I had both bushings installed I was able to start the reassembly of the suspension.
I reinstalled the front section of the upper control arm onto the long bolt and reinserted that back into the crossmember.
I threaded it through the bushing in the rear arm section and put the nut back on to secure everything.
I did NOT completely retighten that nut since I will not do that until the suspension is back at the correct ride height to avoid stressing the bushings.
I then reinstalled the upper ball joint with the proper shims in place and then did the same with the lower ball joint.
That left me here:

New parts installed