How Two Bolts Can Change Your Entire Weekend And Put The Rest Of Your Summer In Perspective

Jag wrenching. It’s something that I have been focused on for the past six years of my life since I bought my first British Racing Green XK8 for ~$200 bucks. It’s also something that y’all have been asking for in the Comments on a few pieces I’ve written here for a hot min now. I had intended for that XK8 to be used for a series of fun wrenching articles, but time and life had other plans for me, and it’s been mostly languishing in my driveway for the past 6 years. Although I will say that it is running, driving, currently registered, and insured, which is always a huge win in The Great Land of Autopia.

It turns out buying and owning Jags is a bit of an addiction, so in that time period since the first, I have purchased five more! I know, I have a problem. I was able to chronicle my first X-Type here, followed by another X-Type that I have yet to write about. The other three include an XK8 and two XKs that I shared in our last Team Roundup here.

Well, this past weekend I finally got the chance to do some (unexpected) Jag wrenching! Namely on the $1,800 2007 XK hardtop. It had been sitting for so long that one of the tires went flat.

Flat Tire Repair Should Just Take A Couple Hours On A Saturday Morning, Right?

Removing the wheel, I was surprised to see that a previous owner had done some really nice-looking welding on what appeared to be two cracks on the wheel. I’m guessing that was a far more economical course of action than purchasing a replacement wheel from Jaguar. Purchasing pretty much anything from Jaguar is almost prohibitively expensive, and should be the absolute last option is what I’ve learned from owning these cars.

These cars also fit the bill as pretty Euro cars that sucker Buy-Here-Pay-Here “3rd Owner” shoppers in for a beautiful luxury ride that they can afford the monthly payment on, but not afford any unexpected repairs or costs.

Well, once the wheel was off, I noticed that the upper ball joint was not only completely missing its rubber boot, but that it was probably in the worst condition out of any ball joint I’ve ever seen. And I spend all of my weekends in junk yards, son! Well, it looks like I’m going to be spending this weekend doing upper ball joints, quite unexpectedly.

Jaguar, in their engineering wisdom, decided to make these upper ball joints socket out of aluminum, but use a steel ball – guess which material is going to win over time? My attempt to remove the upper ball joint was just in time, as soon as I placed pressure on the joint and a wrench on the nut, it separated (without removing the nut)!

Getting the 2 remaining bolts that held the arm into the body was an entirely different story, though.

You must watch the above video to get the full idea, but Jaguar mounts the control arms with bolts that go through the strut towers with nuts that are on the outside of each strut tower. That means on the right side of the car, you have to remove not just the overflow tank and strut tower brace, but also both windshield wipers and the wiper cowl in order to access the rear bolt!

That’s pretty ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as the left side of the car, where you have to remove the fuse box fuse box mount bracket, and the PCM in order to get to the rear mount bolt!

Not the best design. Cars that are hard to fix with expensive parts live short lives, and it is unfortunate that beautiful cars such as these have consistently fallen into that trap decade after decade. Those beautiful cats fall far short when compared to the 178K-mile $220 Dodge Stratus coupe that I have daily driven for the past 11 years after easily replacing the head gasket in 2015; it’s a breeze to work on with cheap, available parts everywhere. It’s living a long life; the big cats usually don’t.

The left side ball joint was also so bad that I couldn’t get the stud to stop spinning in the socket, since the socket was so worn out. I had to pull out the big guns and create some sparks.

Once all of the above was complete, I had spent pretty much the entirety of my Saturday on removing to ball joints that I didn’t even know were dangerously bad. And this was on a car that has spent the past year stationary in my driveway. What else could be wrong that is either :
1) dangerous
2) expensive
3) very time-consuming
4) going to require some serious effort

The above list made me reflect and think deeply on my priorities and on the fact that there were 13 other cars in my fleet with Known Unknowns.

Wait, We Do This Every Weekend, All Summer?

Replacement parts should arrive sometime this week, and hopefully I’ll be able to get them in and get the car back together by next week. This job is only halfway done. Honestly, I have way too many cars (again) and need to get rid of a few. Working full-time and non-stop wrenching on the weekends is a full plate. An over-full one. Not much time left for family, relationships, or for writing these articles for y’all. David said something similar when he was non-stop wrenching on his then-massive fleet in Michigan years ago.

If anyone out there wants a low-mileage SL500, a Jag or two, a C320, Trans Am, LeBaron or a Stealth, hit up your fellow Autopian SWG and we’ll make some magic happen.

Buying cheap, broken luxury cars that you dreamed of in college becomes something of a reality in your 40s. But that reality also requires time, space and money, continuously. It’s important to keep things in perspective and not let your passions start skewing your better financial and life decisions. I love cars. I really love my cars. It’s important to do so in a responsible way.

A few of you have repeatedly asked for more Jag content, so big thanks to all of you (especially our beloved Members) for paying attention/caring, for being here, for supporting the site and for reading this. Knowing these ~20+yr old shitbox cars that I always have a ton to fix upon, I’m sure I’ll have more Jag wrenching content very soon. Until next time, my friends.

88mph into the future.