I have a 1999 XK* with less than 35,000 miles. I have had maintenance performed on most if not all common issues. My biggest complaint/issue now is that the car feels every crack or bump in the road. Usually with a hard thud. Are the shocks or struts adjustable in this model? I want a softer ride is possible. Tires are in the 26lb range already. I searched the site and looked for sticky on subject but found nothing.

 

Your issue is likely with worn-out shock mount hardware and worn-out suspension bushings and other components. While your mileage is quite low, these various components are now at least 25 years old if you have never replaced them before. They degrade with the passage of time. Plenty of reading here on the forum for you to do. Search the forum using "XK8 shock mount issues" and "XK8 suspension issues" and be prepared to spend at least an hour bringing yourself up-to-date on what you likely need to do in order to significantly improve your ride quality....

 

Thanks for reply. Previous owner did the following just before I purchased car:

Replace Front Shock Mount MJA2170BD; and Bump Stops MJA2150BA

 

Another owner once told me at a car show that the struts/springs/shocks have to be "clocked". Is that something to look for?

 

That usually refers to the springs being orientated correctly in their mounts. I would not expect incorrect clocking to affect the suspension to such a large degree.

Richard

 

They were never clocked at factory, all l have ever seen or worked on are random position and at the end of the day clocking will never cover for bad top mounts.
If you are using commonly available aftermarket mounts their failure is assured.

 

And I must add, very quickly.

Baxtor and Wayne (cjd777) make the best available replacement for the shock mounts. I have the first example, which are now a couple years old and have a few thousand miles on them and they are going strong. I need to make another thread about the longevity of my shock mounts but I have absolutely no time in my current residency program, and when I did have time, I went to Rio de Janeiro for vacation. I currently have the car sitting in my garage without driving because of a fuel pulse damper leak and absolutely no time to remove the supercharger to get at the fuel rail and send it off to be capped. Mind you, it's only been about a week.

Now to stop procrastinating, I have lots of papers to read for tomorrow and nowhere near enough hours available tonight.

 

i read about that problem to late and put in some new URO mounts last year. are they really so bad and won’t last a year or two? or how fast are they going bad?

how much do the better ones cost? worldwide shipping possible?

 

PM sent, and yes on the URO mounts, think yearly subscription, if you're lucky.

 

Depends on how much you drive the car and how bad the roads are. I never bothered with the URO mounts because my experience with every part made by them is that it is always trash. I swore them off nearly a decade ago. Reports vary but, some cases have had the UROs last a year, and in some cases less. Because of that, people were buying Welsh's urethane mounts thinking they were an improvement, and for the first few batches, reportedly they were. But at some point either they changed the design or the material and they also started failing quickly. I went through 2 sets in 1 year and then a third set by the next year. Since they didn't want to do a warranty return and brushed me off (as well as other members with similar problems), we were left with no choice.

Amidst all that strife, Wayne tackled the project of figuring out what was the weak point in the design of the mounts made by Welsh, OE, and URO, if I recall correctly. Off the top of my head, aside from what we know of the bushing material of the OEM and URO mounts become dust with age, not mileage, he found that the URO mounts and the Welsh mounts also had a badly engineered internal structure that allowed the inner bush to slip out of position and cause the shock to become misaligned. Furthermore, he also found a sharp edge that was essentially slicing and tearing the donuts from within. In other words, the URO and the Welsh mounts stood no chance of being long lasting. When it came time to have a prototype tested, I volunteered immediately both because of necessity and the fact that the road infrastructure here in PR is poorly maintained. There are more pot-holes per square km than people. Some roads look like the surface of the moon, particularly the ones that were part of my daily commute.

The prototype mounts he made for me have survived the torture chamber that is PR. I installed the mounts at 79,989 miles in March 2021. Now the car has 92,250 miles, and it's been about 2 years and 10 months since. The mounts are still in as good a shape as they were when I installed them, just much dirtier. My entire front suspension is currently in impecable shape despite the torture of these roads. The alignment has stayed true. There has been no camber increase, no drop in ride height (I did at the time redo the entire suspension: all bushes, vee-mounts, cross-member mounts, tie-rods, shocks (I stayed with CATS), anti-roll bar links and bushes, and I lowered the car with the Adamesh springs (1 mm). The ride quality is excellent, just a tad firmer than stock. I plan to provide the ~ 12,000 mile report as soon as I have some days off from school. The only issue I have with my suspension right now is that both my bump stops and the bump stop gaiter are destroyed and need to be replaced. I should probably use the moment when I replace those bump stops to provide an update. I am looking into an alternative front bump-stop. There's a similar looking VW part that power-flex sells in polyurethane. I need to confirm the dimensions before I go ahead and buy them.

Later, Baxtor joined Wayne in further R&D on the shock mounts and in the efforts to supply forum members in need with mounts. They are based worlds apart. Yet somehow they make it work.

It used to be that you would send them your mount as a core and they would rebuild them with their improvements and send it back to you unless they had spare cores lying around. I don't know if that is how they are still currently operating, but Baxtor probably filled you in on that via PM.

 

26psi may be too low. Have you tried running closer to 30?

 

that would just make the ride more harsh . The OP says he wants a less
harsh ride.

My owners manual says use the lower psi numbers (under 100 mph) for greater comfort

 

When I bought the car, it had new tires with less than 1000 miles driven. The shop had inflated to 40 PSI. I finally bothered to check and then reduced to 26 as car label suggested. Still hard thud on larger cracks and bumps. I just wondered if there was a small adjustment on the struts that could be turned down some. I am not autocrossing this car.