I have had a look for front lower and upper ball joints for the x300.
Surprisingly for the upper ones I found some with grease nipples as well as without. For the lower ones I didn’t find any with grease nipples.
So I wonder, are the upper ones compatible with older cars that did have grease nipples and the lower ones are not?
Just curious…
Cheers,
Harald
The lower BJ’s have been sealed for life since the first XJ40 so should be good to go if they are Lemforders.
Lowers fit into all Series XJs, the screws should be shortened or shimmed but mostly cosmetical. Same for the E Type.
Uppers fit all Series XJs and later and all my ball joints and the drive shaft are sealed.
Lemförder are good anywhere although I went for a set that was so cheap I couldn’t believe it and it appears to be very decent. I was surprised.
Anyways, the grease nipple is not needed. Maybe the thinking is that pre XJ40 the lower ball joints were serviceable, so no replacement, and the uppers needed a grease nipple to be an identical replacement that fits more models, so they sell it with one.
So if I understand this correctly, the series 1 ( ,2 and 3) XJ had lower and upper ball joints with grease nipples.
At some point the grease nipples were delete.
The XJ40 then had revised lower ball joints, which were never available with grease nipples. Those revised ones can be retrofitted to the series 1, 2 and 3 XJ but need the screws shortening.
So the top ones are really quite an old design and to be correct for the old XJ done manufactures supply them with grease nipples.
Makes perfect sense now.
Thanks a lot!
Harald
My post is a mess but you got the right amount out. Sorry.
I don’t know if it was changed before the XJ40 but the lowers on the XJs can be shimmed to account for wear. The bottom half is removed for that.
When a sealed ball joint is used the bolts are slightly too long as the removable half plus spacers took up a few mm more.
I think the top ball joints are always the same item, some have the nipple added and some don’t, but the part may be the same. Although I’ve had cast ones that looked much older than any XJ as well as ones with flat, machined sides. It’s an old design that works and probably compatible to many more cars.
I do like how they’re all compatible (but beware: the last time the lowers had a slight mismatch and I had to drill out one screw hole to get it in; probably got too cheap!)
I have just disassembled my ‘66 ‘S’ type and the front suspension had the XJ40 lower BJ’s fitted, by me probably 25 years ago so the backwards compatibility goes quite a way.
The xk upper ball joint looks identical as well. From the photos I would say it’s the same part and the whole suspension design looks fairly similar, obvious differences aside! And plenty of photos without a grease nipple.
It certainly extended back to my '63 E Type, likely back into the 50s saloons.