I successfully replaced the rear left hub carrier with a rebuilt unit this weekend. It went fairly straight away, but I thought I’d share the experience. Here are the instructions which include what’s in the manual plus my own modifications (for DIYers) and lessons learned. If this seems valuable, maybe we can sticky or link it to the DIY procedures thread. It should also be applicable to the X300/X308.

1. Remove the little Jaguar cap from the center of your wheel. This grants you access to the hub nut. With the car still on the ground and chocked (or held in place somehow), break the nut loose (but do not remove). It is on tight! The minimum you’ll need to do this will be a ½” drive 27mm socket, an extension, a breaker bar and possibly an extension pipe. A good, powerful pneumatic impact wrench “should” be able to handle this (I have a ¾” inch impact wrench that “takes no prisoners”!)

2. Make sure the parking brake is released and raise the car. Remove the wheel and brake caliper. The caliper hose has just enough length to hang the caliper nicely from a couple of holes cut into a horizontal gusset just forward of the fender well.

3. Getting the brake disc off the hub was a little bit of a challenge. What ultimately worked was banging on the wheel mounting studs (carefully!) with a sledge while pulling on the portion of the disc exposed in the caliper area. I would rotate the disc so that I was always pulling on the disc just adjacent to the stud I was hitting. Be careful not to mess up the threads on the studs – some kind of thread protector might be advisable.

4. Getting the parking brake assembly out was indeed a royal PITA; the instructions and diagrams in the manual were quite lacking.

4.a. Go under the car and loosen the center parking brake adjuster until it is quite loose (about 1”). I did not need to separate the two cables.

4.b. Remove the two little cap & spring things that are in the middle of the brake shoes. This is a nice design – you don’t need that weird tool that you may be familiar with on drum brakes. Instead, you use a long allen wrench (around 6 or 7 mm). Push in, turn 90 degrees, wiggle around a bit until the T-end frees itself, and you’re done. Nice.

4.c. Make note of the number of exposed threads on the adjuster device – you’ll return to this set-up directly during reinstallation – then turn the adjuster ring until it’s completely retracted. Pry the shoes apart at the top far enough to so you can remove the adjuster.

4.d. The long, top retraction spring should pretty much just fall out now.

4.e. Now go to the bottom of the assembly. Do what you can to pry the shoes apart and get the extender mechanism out from between the shoes. NOTE: There is a very short clevis pin holding the cable to the mechanism. It is normally trapped in place by the rest of the device around it; when you pull the mechanism away from the hub THIS PIN WILL FALL OUT! Be prepared. Obviously, if it doesn’t fall out, remove it, free the cable clevis end and remove the extender mechanism.

4.f. You can now remove the shoes with the lower retraction spring still attached.

4.g. Now go under the hub carrier and look up. There is a white plastic collar holding the end of the cable housing in place. It has a tab on it. Grab the tab with some pliers and just pull it off. It doesn’t require much effort, so don’t squeeze too hard with the pliers as you might crush the tab. THAT would be a problem!

4.h. The cable is almost free. With a screw driver work the rubber grommet (on the inside of the hub carrier) free. The inserted portion of the grommet is quite long - over an inch of it is imbedded in the carrier. Slow and easy gets the job done simply.

4.i. Now you can completely retract the parking brake cable from the hub carrier.

5. On the rear bottom of the hub carrier is the head of the spindle bolt. It has an eccentric washer fixed to it. This eccentricity is used to adjust toe-in for the rear wheel. Mark the position of the washer with respect to the hub carrier so you can return it to the exact orientation.

6. Remove the spindle nut from the front side and work the spindle bolt loose, but leave it in place.

7. Remove the hub nut. At this point my job got a bit strange. Normally, you need a hub puller to extract the hub from the splined end of the half shaft. In my case the hub just fell off! (Actually, the entire assembly came apart after removal! So much for pressed fit – the guts were pretty much trashed)

8. While supporting the hub carrier from below, remove the spindle bolt and pull the hub carrier free of the half shaft and control arm.


Reassembly was the pretty much opposite of the above procedure. Below are some notes I made:

1. There are thick shims at each end of the spindle bearings. These shims should be identical to each other, but they are unique to “that” hub carrier. Do not swap these shims if you’re installing a rebuilt or used hub carrier assembly.

2. The manual calls for Loc-tite on the half shaft splines as well as the threads. Apparently, the mechanic who did this job last lubed the splines with lithium grease. I cleaned this off.

3. Remember to rotate the spindle bolt eccentric washer back into its proper orientation before torqueing the spindle nut on.

4. Tighten the hub nut as much as you can, but don’t worry about torqueing (that will come later). Make sure the conical bushing/spacer that's just inside of the nut is located true.

5. While reinstalling the parking brake mechanism, be careful when handling the clevis pin. It WILL fall away without you noticing if you’re not attentive.

6. I replaced the brake cable’s rubber grommet before reinstalling the white plastic clip. Spray some WD-40 on the portion of the grommet to be inserted. Then, with the cable housing retracted about 1”, I pushed the cable and the grommet into the hub carrier in one shot. Put the white plastic clip back on now.

7. When reinstalling the brake disc, make sure the opening for adjusting the parking brake aligns with the same hole in the hub.

8. Once the disc is back on the hub (do not get the back side of the disc dirty/greasy), take the time to adjust your parking brakes. Simply use a screw driver to rotate the adjuster ring until you can’t turn the hub; then back it off until the hub is free again. On the left side of the car, you rotate the ring “up” to tighten the brake. On the right side, you rotate it down.

9. Install and torque the wheel/tire onto the car with the little hub cap still removed. Lower the car onto the wheels and apply the final torque to the hub nut. This is substantial: about 240 ft-lbs. I have a ¾” drive torque wrench that gave me “just” enough leverage.

9.a. Another method I’ve used to apply the final torque to a hub nut is to use a breaker bar with a pipe extension that gives you a grip point 4 feet from the socket. Pull up on the pipe while standing on a bathroom scale until the scale reads 60 lbs above your weight. That will be 240 ft-lbs of torque. (You could also pull to 80 lbs with a grip point 3 feet from the socket).

10. Don’t forget to retighten the center parking brake adjuster. Tighten until you get three clicks out of the parking brake handle while applying full pressure.

10.a. BTW: Even after being perfectly adjusted, my parking brake still can’t resist the force of car when I put it in gear while idling. So stupidly driving off with the brake on is still a possibility (sigh).

Good luck to all!!!

 

Sorry guys. My directions included one mistake (I hope!).

The spindle bearing shims on the two sides of the hub carrier "can" be different. So not only is it essential that you retain the shims associated with their respective carrier, but it is critical that they are also NOT swapped side to side.

Ciao Y'awl!

 

Scardini1, Great write up and the rotor giving you a fit was typical, even on cars not in the salt zone. Jon89 and I had a 3 prong puller going into the cooling gaps on the rotor and used a air hammer on a flat piece of metal, worked our way round while tightening the puller and bang. I noticed you didn't say anything about using anti seize. We wire brushed the inside of the rotor and the backing plate, then used aluminum anti seize. If you are going to keep the car, we will be back in there at some point, surely!
Thanks again for taking the time to keep us up to date on things we may have to do in the future.


Wayne

 

Terrific write up. And I find it amazing and comforting that anyone can turn to the experiences of the members of this forum to solve problems when they arise. In this case, it could have been a very dangerous problem that was averted.

Great job!