Before completing the final install of the rear end I wanted to trial fit the remaining components, that being the tie bars and the shock absorbers. Both these components and fitting hardware are supplied in the AK kit.
Tie Bar Fitting
As with all AK parts these are supplied in bubble wrap for protection and come with two 7/16” x 3" + M12 washers and Nylocs nuts used to fasten the tie bar to the chassis. The first step is to fit the tie bars between the mounting points on the chassis and the differential tie bar bracket. Previous bloggers have warned about the poor fitment of these parts, be it due to the tie bar length or excessive powder coating preventing the ends of the tie bars fitting into the chassis. So I wonder what joys lye in store for me with this task.
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| Tie bar and its fitting hardware. |
With a sense that a lot of potential tweaking might be about to happen, I began trying to fit the top part of the tie bar between the tabs welded onto the chassis. Straight away it was evident that the tie bar end was far too thick to fit between the mounting tabs. I, therefore, got out the hand fill and placed the tie bar in my bench vice. Whilst trying to keep the filled surface as flat as possible, I filled down both faces of the tie bar end. I also filled the inside surface of the tags welded on the chassis. After lots of trial fitting and filling, I eventually got the tie bar ends to fit into the mounting tabs.
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| Filled down ends of the tie bar. |
After repeating this filling process on both tie bars I finally got them both to fit. I will return to these filled parts later and give them a coat of POR-15 to prevent them from rusting, but for now, I have bigger issues.
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| The top part of tie bar fitted |
With the tie bars fitted and temporarily secured to the top of the chassis, the next step is to check their fitment with the differential tie bar. With the tie bars rotated between the mounting tabs on the tie bar, the magnitude of my new problem becomes apparent. The through holes in the tie bar ends do not align with the corresponding holes on the tie bar bracket… bugger. Given one side appears low and the other two high, it looks like the differential/frame is rotated/twisted slightly. AK acknowledges that some miss aligned is expected and their suggestion is to drill out the holes to widen them, “Note due to some differences in Jaguar rear diff carriers it might need a drill running through before the bolts will line up.” This seems to go against all that I know about what tie bars are for and how they work, so I am keen to avoid this. I could go all ‘Project Binky’ on the frame cutting and re-welding it to level it off, but that seems excessive and beyond my skill set.
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| The miss-alignment of the tie bars with the differential tie bar mount. |
A few simpler ideas came to mind about how to fix this including moving the tie bar mount and/or cutting the tie bar and welding collars over the bars to extend/shrink them. However, after discussing this further with Mark Gaby (a great sounding board with excellent ideas), the idea we came up with was to loosen the bolts which mount the differential to the chassis and then apply some gentle leverage to adjust the position of the differential such that the tie bar mounts line up. With this simple plan in mind, it’s time to see how it works.
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| Nose bolts of differential loosened. |
With the differential, mount nuts loosened the next stage is to apply some gentle leverage to align the bracket and tie bar. I started by placing the trolley jack below the differential to raise the base of the differential, with no joy. I then got out my lady slipper and using the narrow tip was able to fit it through the bracket and just into the tie bar itself. With gentle leverage, I could just about align the two pieces. The problem that then arose was the lack of physical space, as with the holes aligned with the pry bar, I couldn’t then fit the bolts through that same hole. To make the matter more difficult I wasn’t able to pry from the other side or pass the bolt it from that side, so I needed another solution. To hold the two parts in their leveraged position with the lady slipper removed, I tried fitting a large no 10. Allen key into the aligned slot, from the tight backside. This was short enough to fit in this gap, whilst thick (wide) enough to keep the parts reasonable aligned.
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| Applying leverage from the rear and then a large Allen key (on a socket) is slid in from the front to keep the parts temporally aligned. |
With the Allen key socket keeping the parts aligned the lady slipper could be removed and the greased bolts could slide through. This did require a few gentle taps with a hammer to get it through but it went in nicely. Having repeated this on one side the process was repeated on the other side to the same effect.
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| Tie bar bolt partially installed. |
Greased bolt being passed through the tie bar bracket and into the tie bar, whilst Allen key socket keeps the alignment from the other side.
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| Success! The bolt fits through the bracket and the tie bar end. |
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| One tie bar fitted! |
Once both tie bars have been fitted its sadly time to pull it all apart so I can paint the filled faces of the tie bar and chassis tabs, to avoid them rusting. A few coats of POR15 later and the bars look as good as when they came from AK. As previously in this build all metal to metal contacts need a coating of copper grease and this includes both ends of the tie bar and the mounting taps for the on both the chassis and the tie bar bracket.
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| (left) Re-painted tie bar ends (right) cooper greased ready for re-installation. |
The tie bars are then installed for the final time by repeating the above process the differential nuts are re-tightened. All this leveraging and nut tightening is certainly going to apply a static force/shear force to the differential which I assume will be taken up by the bushes. I suspect though that all this will impact my original measurements for the prop shaft shims… but that’s a problem for later (oh joy, more testing fitting of the prop shafts).
Offering up the Shocks
The last remaining parts of the rear corner which I wanted to trial fit are the AK supplied shocks. Having read other blogs these seem to be an easy bolt on item. Let’s hope this is as true for my build.
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| Shocks supplied by AK, still in their box |
The AK kit is supplied with all the required mount hardware, which is a pair of 7/16” x 4.5" and 7/16” x 2.5” bolts with corresponding Nylocs and M12 washers. Mixing metric and imperial here… something seems very off balanced to me.
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| Shock with corresponding fitting hardware, also supplied by AK. |
Starting with the offside, the shock absorber is fitted first to the top mounting tabs, using the longer of the two bolts. The swing arm can then be raised and the shock absorber rotated outwards until the mounting holes line up. Then the shorter of the two bolts can be passed through a fastened in place. Both of these bolts fitted through the pre-drilled holes with no problem or miss alignment. At this stage, since I was just trial fitting I did not apply copper grease to these bolts and the nuts were only lightly tightened.
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| Trial fitted shock absorber. |
Both sides went on easily, which was a welcome change from the tie bars. Once I was happy with the fitment they were then removed and placed back in their box for safe keeping. They have to be removed for the re-measurement of the chamber angle and final fitment of the rear hubs, but that will be the topic of another entry.
