Anyone have any ideas on how to separate totally frozen radius arms, before I take to them with the die grinder and cutting wheel.

So far I have soaked them in WD40 and used a
small prybar
hammer, bigger hammer, VERY BIG hammer
5" prybar

The LH bolt snapped, the radius arm bent and they are still hanging on.

cheers
Warren

 

Warren,

Time is what is maybe needed.

As you are in Perth, try your local Auto store for a Loctite product called "Freeze and Release". It is reasonably new on the market, and I have used it on various occassions with great success, however it requires some soaking time to assist with freeing up the bits, as per the labeled instructions.

Those arms can be a PAIN to get off, and the bolt breaking is not uncommon, sadly. I have had issues with some over the years and simple persistant bashing is the only way, and YES the pod in the floor can rupture sometimes.

Long term soaking is really the key, but is not always suitable due to usage requirements of the car.

On our S2, knowing they were to be done, and time was a premium, I sprayed them liberally with WD or whatever every night for a week, and they basically fell off with very little belting required.

 

Thanks Grant

I am in Sydney now, forgot to update my profile.

I am not planning on reinstalling the radius arms, one is totally shot anyway and the rusted bolt kind of made me think of removing and doing away with the radius arm mounts and radius arms totally.

I have squirted them with with WD40 every day since Sunday still no movement. I am not in a hurry in fact what started out as a freshen of the rear and new shocks will end up as a complete under body restoration

 

Wrong Pic

This does not show the bend in the arm

 

The stock rear cage mounting is not really stable enough to do away with the radius arms. It's pretty flexible and needs the radius arms to control fore-aft movement. Unless you add something else to stabilize its movement, it will rock under braking and acceleration.

Hot rods that utilize a Jag IRS typically do away with the radius arms because they solidly mount the diff and the lower control arms to the chassis, eliminating the fore and aft motion altogether, at the expense of noise and ride compliance.

The xj40 rear suspension eliminated the radius arms by redoing the cage design to incorporate additional control. Maybe you could add some structure to do the same, but it would be easier and more cost effective to simply use the original xjs design.

 

I just recently went through the same thing. I ended up cutting through the rubber with a hacksaw. The straight knife handle type not the horseshoe shaped kind. After that I sawed a diagonal cut into the cup. Not enough to cut all the way through it but just enough to get the end of a chisel in to hammer it slightly downwards. It popped off fairly easy this way after nothing else I tried worked. I also broke a bolt off in it during the process. Luckily after getting the cup off there was enough thread on the bolt left to get a pipe wrench and a torch on it to finish getting it out. If you do end up using a torch at some point make sure you get all of the wd40 soaked rubber off before hand. Good luck, I know what a pain these things are.

Dan

1990 XJS V12 convertible Marelli

 

Good idea I was going to cut through the arm

I was planning on one of two things to rigidly mount the rear cage

1. Using an XJ40 subframe mounted to the diff bottom plate and then mounted to the radius arm mounts. Ala XJ40. The only downside I see is the original radius arm mounts are a trap for dirt and muck. See the pic got this idea off a guy in Europe who did this to his XJ12C

2. Cutting the radius arm mounts off and welding new vertical mount with aftermarket trailing arms mounted as per above to the bottom diff plate. Mounts like this Range Rover Classic Rear Trailing Arm Mount Bracket | eBay

This will serve two purposes, allow removal of the radius arms and prevent the cage from twisting under power.

 

Finally some success.

I used a 14mm drill to drill through the rubber. I have separated the radius arms from the car all I need to do now is remove the inner bush from the mount.

 

Here is the link where I got the idea of scoring the cup for removal when I did mine. They have a pic on there with the proper way to cut the cup if this helps. There is probably a better way but this did actually work for me. I've also heard of people using an air chisel to speed things up.


Jaguar XKE E-type Restoration: The Rear Suspension and Brakes 2: Jacking Up and Removing the Radius Arms « Jaguar XKE Restoration

Dan
1990 XJS V12 convertible marelli

 

Thanks Dan

Gives me a reason to use my new air chisel. I was going to break out the angle grinder and cut a diagonal across the seized bush cup goo to someone has done it and it works.

 

Finally got the bushes off today. A diagonal cut with the grinder and a big screwdriver did the job. No wonder they did not want to move check out the rust in the bush and mount.

I ended up cutting both mounts off just to check inside the chassis rail fortunately all looked good. I am going to weld new plates in the rail to strengthen where I cut the bit out.

I have an XJ40 rear subframe on the way. Oh well what started off as a simple replacement of the shocks and clean up of the rear has grown into a full under body resto.

I started to strip all of the underbody today. This revealed a couple of holes in the join between the rear lower panel and the rear quarter panel, I wondered how the water was getting into the boot (trunk for you in the USA).

 

Since I am in construction, I had a large "as we call, spud bar available."
With several nicely placed blocks and the right fulcrum point these babies popped right off. Leaving rubber bits to be cleaned up of course.

 

I had a 6 foot pry bar on them and they would not budge even after cutting the rubber they would not budge. I had to take an angle grinder and cut the cup still I had trouble separating them from the mount - they were obviously very happy there and did not want to move.

cheers

 

FFR, "PB Blaster" works MUCH better than WD40.

 

hey Warrjon. i thought i would post this video i found. this guy talks about the draw backs of the stock radius arms and he talks a little bit about how he is going to modify them, and remount them to improve the function of the radius arm. i figured since you want to do away with them completely, this might be a useful alternative.

XJS stock final drive removal - YouTube

 

For the cups at the front end of the bar I have found that a couple of whacks via a big screwdriver at the inside the cup (after removing the centre bolt ) holding the screwdriver as far as possible parallel to the floor makes it fall off straight away. For the rear bolt/bushing I have ended up cutting away each time.