Steering, handbrake and lights on the Jaguars
The handbrake on the 1989 XJ6 has not been holding the car on a slope, and with the car jacked up I could tell that the nearside wheel was the one not being held as it should be. I have never replaced the handbrake shoes since I bought this car 13 years ago, so to be absolutely sure the linings were not worn down, I decided to remove the nearside disc and drum assembly just to check.
Fortunately, the bolts holding the disc caliper freed off easily, as did the set screw securing the handbrake drum in place, which can be a devil to move. Once the drum was removed, I was relieved to see that the linings still had plenty of meat on them. Therefore, I simply replaced the drum, then inserted a screwdriver through the adjusting access hole in it and flicked the knurled adjuster round as necessary. After the disc caliper was swung back into place and bolted down securely, the road wheel was refitted. Once the wheel nuts were torqued up, I moved the car out to the rather steep hill adjacent to out house. The handbrake held the car perfectly, so that was another job done.
Meanwhile, when I’d been under the 1888 Jaguar Sovereign recently, I had noticed a split in the nearside rubber gaiter that protects the end of the steering rack. Apart from the fact that the gaiter is there to stop dirt and grit from damaging the rack, a split would be an MoT fail. After getting hold of a new gaiter from SNG Barratt, the car was jacked up and supported on stands. To avoid having to have the steering geometry realigned, before undoing the track-rod end, I carefully marked the position of the adjusting nut with Tipp-Ex.
Having been in situ for a very long time, the lock-nut keeping the track-rod adjusting nut in place was rather reluctant to undo, but after a good dowsing of WD40 it finally yielded. The clamp securing the gaiter to the end of the steering rack was then snipped and removed, allowing the old rubber gaiter to be withdrawn over the now free track-rod. The new rubber gaiter was then fed on and seated over the lip at the end of the steering rack. I then realised that I did not have the right size metal clamp, so I used a cable tie to secure it temporarily. Re-attaching the
track-rod to the track-rod end was a tad fiddly to start on the thread, but once the nut caught on, all went well.
Although the track-rod was very carefully marked with Tipp-Ex and very great care was taken to tighten it up in exactly the same position as it had been in before it was removed, I was really concerned that I had not got it right as the track-rod had to be in exactly the same position as it had been in prior to disconnection to preserve the correct tracking geometry. Once the front wheel was back on and the car was down off the jack and the wheel stands, I took it up the road to check. There was no pulling to the left or right and the steering wheel was still perfectly centred, so I count that as a success.
[It is probably worth mentioning that this method doesn’t work if you are changing the trackrod ends too, because of slight dimensional differences between parts. In such cases, get the tracking checked
afterwards. A DIY tool like the Trakrite will produce excellent results if you don’t want to take it to a specialist – Ed]
Still feeling rather pleased with myself, I was putting the car away for the night when I discovered that I had no dipped headlamps. Since both sides had failed, I started to worry about the various reasons why they should both go at the same time. I checked the fuses, relays, light modules, in fact just about everything electrical on the car. Later that evening, I suddenly realised the one thing I’d not checked was the wretched bulbs! Believe it or not, they had both failed. This was curious, but I drive on dipped headlamps during the day, using the lights to be seen rather than to see with, and since I had not used the car at night recently, I had not noticed when the first bulb had failed and it didn’t mean they had both popped at the same moment. The Sovereign’s ‘fish-tank’ style lamps were never particularly efficient, so as both bulbs had to be replaced, I took the opportunity to upgrade with ELTA Vision Pro 150 bulbs. These have made a colossal difference. They claim to provide up to 150% more light than standard H4 bulbs, and
I can report that this certainly seems believable. Fitting them however, particularly the offside bulb where the front grille assembly and complete lamp unit needs to be removed, was an utter pain.
“The nearside wheel was the one not being held as it should be ”