Hi all , Iam replacing the bushes in my control arms and don’t have a proper jag spring compressor , would it be OK or dangerous to use a normal pair of spring compressors , i’ve been hit a flying spring once and it #%^&*ing hurt bad . Mark
Well I wouldn’t use a “normal” pair of spring compressors myself …however …
- One way to do it without one of the Jaguar spring compressors is to get the front of the car jacked up pretty high, take one bolt out of the lower spring pan and go pick up FOUR 18" lengths of ready-rod and 8 nuts that match the thread.
Thread the first rod into the “missing” bolt-hole and run up two nuts to the plate. Then remove another bolt and repeat this process one at a time til you’ve got 4 rods in place with the nuts run up to the spring pan.
Now you can slowly slacken off the nuts and and as you do, the pan will come down, decompressing the spring until the tension is all gone and you can pull it out. - Slow process, but safe.
Agree NEVER use normal spring compressorson the front springs they are in an arc.
You can fabricate a compressor very similar to the Jag item.
A 3/4”/19mm threaded rod cross drilled at the top to accept a 1/4” roll pin and about 400mm long.
Next you need a couple of 3mm X 45 or 50mm square washers (one cut in half and welded to form an ‘L’ shape
I welded to nuts together to increase the thread contact area.
There is a tee slot in the top spring pan through which the threaded rod enters and then you rotate it 90 deg and it locates in a depression.
Take up the tension to remove the lower pan bolts and then unwind the double nut to release the spring.
All care and no responsibility.
Hi Mark! I also made my own spring compressor out of a 19 mm (3/4") thick threaded rod with heavy duty washers and a nut. And I bought 6 smaller bolts with nuts (sorry, I forgot their size) for the spring pan. When I decompressed the front spring(s), I only used the compressor but for reinstallation I used the longer (than the orig.) pan bolts because I didn’t want to stretch the rod too much. One snapped, so I had to make another one.
This is my YT video of how I did it. I’m not a very good talker, sorry about that but I hope it’ll help. I also mentioned some measurements at the end of the vid.
Cheers!
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Getting the springs off using the threaded rod method is do-able with the usual caveats about safety. However, using that method to re-compress the spring to get the pan back is a PITA because the pan holes are difficult to align. The proper Jaguar compressor has a ball/adjustable fitting at the bottom which makes the job much easier.
Frankie
thanks Joseph , will have to make one and give it a go , the video is good , thanks Mark
Mark, I hope I was able to help.
Good video but one thing I would have done was to load the suspension so that the car was just about off the axle stand to simulate the car in its driven stance so that the lower bushes are not under rotational tension.
Robin,
later I loosened the nut of both wishbones then drove the car around in my community then I tightened them. I should’ve mentioned it in the vid.