Painting Things Black

With the bulk of the parts de-rusted with Deox-C, things are looking a lot more presentable. On some parts, the surface finish was still very rough, mainly on the front hub ‘cap’ and rear splash shield. To improve this finish, I gave them a quick sanding by hand. With some care, these surfaces looked a lot smoother and ready for painting.

Sanded and de-greased rear splash shield. Hanging and ready for painting.

Now that these parts are ‘de-rusted’, they need to be painted to protect the bare metal and to make them look nicer. I did some research into different paints before settling on POR 15 (Paint Over Rust) from Frost. I chose this paint mainly due to the vast number of previous builders/restorers who had used it, with barely any negative comments. Most blogs recommended buying only a small amount of this paint as it goes a very long way and some blogs even noted that if you are not very careful you can seal the lid to the can after one use. I guess this a testament to the strength of the paint itself. I, therefore, ordered 1 US pint of semi-gloss black from Amazon. When it arrived I realized I didn’t have any sacrificial paint brushes, although a quick trip to Wilko resolved this problem. 

Since the cleaning was done in stages whilst being stuck during the breakdown work, so, in turn, was the painting. However, rather than painting each part in turn once it had been cleaned, I collected a selection of parts together and painted them in one go. In the first round of painting I painted the following parts:

• Four Caliper carriers
• Two Rear splash shield
• Differential tie bar
• Different pendulum
• Differential bracket
• Two Front hubcaps

To ease the painting process, I tied most of the above parts to my garage door rails and wiped them down one last time with white spirit to remove any remaining grease. To avoid having permanent black blobs on the garage floor I placed plenty of newspaper below them.

Suspended parts ready for painting.

Some parts were too heavy to easily support from the rail (Pendulum and Differential tie bar) or did not have holes (front hubcaps) to attached them to the rail and so I placed these on newspaper on the floor.

Painted parts drying.

When it came to doing a second coat I discovered that despite having carefully cleaned the brush with lots of Fairy and white spirit, I must have left a small trace of the paint on the bristles because they went rock hard. After letting these parts dry/cure for about 5 hours, using another paintbrush I applied a second coat. I was very impressed with the finish of the paint and these parts. I wouldn’t say the parts were perfectly smooth but they are 20 years old after all. The gloss definitely builds up with each additional layer. 

Painted rear splash shield.

Painted caliper bracket.

Painted Differential Pendulum.

A few weekends later, once I had completed the strip down of the calipers, I continued the painting process. By this stage I had gathered together not only the brake components but also finished cleaning the front and rear hubs. These hubs didn’t need the Deox-C treatment, but instead a good wash in soapy water. 

Caliper and pistons in cleaned ready for painting. The slight surface rust on the calipers should not be a problem as POR15 is designed to be painted onto rusty surfaces.

Calipers and pistons ready for painting

To avoid paint getting inside the brake calipers I re-attached the cut sections of brake lines and reinstalled the bleed nipples. I then put a layer of electrical tape over the exposed bleed nipple to keep it clean. Further, I filled the main piston bore with newspaper and duct tape. The surfaces of the piston which sit inside the caliper should also not be painted so these were covered in a layer of black electrical tape (as shown in the above image).

To keep paint out of the internal surfaces of the hubs, these were also filled with newspaper and then a layer of duct tape. 

Front hubs cleaned and ready for painting.

The painting of these parts followed the same process as before, starting with a wipe over with white spirit and then two layers of POR 15.

Painted calipers and pistons.

Painted hubs.

With the painting of the donor parts, things are starting to look a lot of respectable and not just like a pile of rusty car parts. I can’t wait to get these on the chassis when it arrives.

The Cleaning Begins

Now that the bulk of the strip down is done, the next step is to clean, paint and service the parts ready for use on the new chassis. To minimize this work make sure to only clean the required parts, by reading through the AK manual (spot the rogue parts later on). I should say that whilst this blog article appears after all the strip down of the subframes is completed, in actuality due to being stuck at various stages (fulcrum shafts, separating the rear diff components to name just a few), this cleaning progress was done alongside the stripping down process.

As both of the front a rear brakes came off first, this entry will cover their cleaning, as well the initial stripping down of the calipers.

First Clean

With the bulk of the parts removed, the scale of the cleaning task ahead was very uninviting. To make this more fun and less like manual labor, I broke out the pressure washer. This should give all the parts an initial clean and degrease. Whilst this did not remove all the grease and grim it did remove the majority of the surface dirt/grim.

Originally dirty parts.

To avoid spraying dirt/grease everywhere, I needed a contained place to pressure wash these parts. So the day after our recycling bin was emptied, I turned it on its side, placed each part in turn inside and gave them a good spray. To aid the pressure washer I connected it up to a bucket with very soapy water. Given the color and quantity of grit which came out the upturned bin, this process certainly did something. With the parts sprayed, I left them on the drive to dry. With the warm summer this year, this did not take long.

Comparison of rear brake caliper before and after a pressure wash.

Pressure washed parts drying on the driveway.

Removing the Rust

The next stage of cleaning is to remove as much of the rust as possible. I don’t want to say I will remove all the rust, as at some point I would like to start building up the chassis. The rustiest parts which need to be reused are certainly the brake calipers (shown below). Whilst I could use a wire brush and/or a Dremel to clean these parts, this seems like a lot of effort, and I don’t have a Dremel. Luckily there is an easy chemical based option, which requires no more effort than placing these parts in a bucket of a chosen chemical solution.

Front brake calipers – initial condition.

Rear brake calipers with the carrier – initial condition.

After watching numerous rust removal product review videos on YouTube and reading other cobra blogs, I choose to go with Deox-C from Bilt Hamber. Weighing up the options on their website I chose to go for the 4 kg bag, rather than smaller bottles or the pre-made solution. This should give me plenty of rust removing solution without needing to reorder any.

Using this solution was easy, I mixed a 25% ratio of the powder to hot water in a 20 liter bucket. I then placed the complete caliper assembly and carriers into this solution. The Deox-C should not attack any of the rubber parts on the calipers, so no need to fully disassemble them at this point. However, I won't be re-using these rubber components anyway, so the point is mute. When placing the calipers into this solution, I ensured that the cut end of the brake lines stayed above the water line. This should avoid water getting into the brakes. 

Then 24 hours after placing the parts in the Deox-C bath I removed and inspected the chemicals hard work. The initially less rusty parts came out with a dark surface coating which easily washed off. With these parts rinsed, the metal looked in brand new condition, ready for painting (right hand side of image below).

Caliper with no rust left on it. Notice the black surface coating on the left-hand side which has been washed off the right-hand side.

The more rusty parts certainly look a lot better, and the regions which still had surface rust had now turned a bright orange color. Scrubbing these areas further removed a lot of the now loose surface rust, but it did not remove everything. These then went straight back into the Deox-C bath for another 24 hours.

Rear Brake caliper immediately after coming out from Deox-C bath.

Front brake caliper – still rusty after 24 hours and scrubbing.

I repeated this process of leaving the parts in the Deox-C bath for 24 hours and then scrubbing the surface to remove the loose rust. After 4 days all the parts came out clean. I did not change or replace the Deox-C during this period, which further adds to how impressed I am with this cleaner/de-ruster.

De-rusted caliper.

When finished, the magic solution appeared very black and had a lot of grey sediment sitting at the bottom. Reading the literature that came with the product, it says it is safe to pour down the drain, which I carefully did. I then rinsed the bucket out and also poured this down the same drain.

In addition to the large parts, I also had to clean a lot of the smaller nuts, bolts, handbrake shoe springs, and assorted clips. The process for these was the same, although instead of the large bucket, these were placed in a small jar with Deox-C. For such small parts, a single 24 hours was generally sufficient to remove the rust before being taken out scrubbed and rinsed. 

To keep track of these small parts, I bought a small bits box from TK-Maxx. Once each part was clean and dry, it got placed in this box, along with a label explaining where it had come from. This should prove invaluable later when rebuilding. 

Box of clean small parts, with labels.

At later stages, I also cleaned the pendulum, differential tie bar, and both front and rear hubs, although not discussed above since they followed the same process. The rear aluminium hub carrier (IRS) was dealt with separately and will be tackled in a future blog entry.

Disassembling the Brakes Calipers

With the brake calipers cleaned and de-rusted the next step is to break them down further into their component parts e.g. caliper and piston. Hopefully, this will now be a slightly cleaner job… although I doubt it will actually be clean! For me, this started with ensuring that all the bleed nipples and brake hoses could be loosened. The bleed nipples are all 9 mm nuts, which came off with a little careful force. The brake hoses have two different size bolt heads (15 mm on the front and 14 mm on the rear), but oddly, the internal threads of both are the same.

My next plan was to remove the brake piston and the rubber components. After a little research online I found two approaches; one is to pump the brakes whilst on the car and the other is to blow the pistons out with a compressed air line placed over the open hose line port. Since neither of these methods would work for me, I needed to come up with a different solution. 

To replicate a compressed air line, I decided to use a bicycle pump. However, in order to get sufficient air/pressure into the caliper, I have epoxied a football pump needle into one of the removed brake hose lines. I can then attach the needle end of the line to the pump and use the hose connector to attach it to the caliper, as normal. I did originally try without the epoxy, with just using multiple cable ties, but this did not give a good enough seal.

Bicycle pump connected to brake line with an epoxied needle.

 With the DIY tool connected to a caliper, I then placed a piece of wood in between the piston and the opposing side of the caliper to avoid the piston hitting the caliper and damaging itself. Then with two strokes on the pump, each piston in-turn popped out. Such an effortless job! Even though I might not need this section of hose again, it is defiantly a keeper.

Piston removed from caliper using DIY tool.

With the pistons out, they can be inspected for scratches and damage. Luckily they all appear to be in good order, with no scratches or marks below where the rubber boot sits.

The key lesson which I learned here from Ian, was to only ever use brake cleaner on the internals of these calipers, never WD40, or my favorite go-to cleaning product: white spirit. Luckily, I had already ordered a large spray can of this from Amazon. The internals of the calipers are then cleaned with brake cleaner spray. I found it helpful to also spray cleaner through both the bleed nipple and the brake hose port. I was surprised by the amount of gunk that came out of these internal sections.

Front caliper with piston and seals removed.

The piston itself is a story of two parts. The external surfaces of the piston were cleaned by rubbing them with a rag and brake cleaner to remove small imperfections and dirt. 

Cleaned front brake piston.

The internal part of the piston, however, was a lot rustier/dirtier. With delicate fingers and some sand paper, it was a quick job to get these internal surfaces looking considerably better and ready for painting.

Sanded internal surfaces of the front piston. 

The painting and re-assembly of these components are still to be tackled and so will come later.

Opening the Differential

In an earlier post, I mentioned I had an issue opening the differential cover due to the two large bolts which support the tie bar. After some head scratching, Ian came up with a perfect tool for removing these stubborn bolts. What's more, on his holiday travels to Finland he even found such a tool in a local hardware store, something none of my local tool stores stocked. The magic tool is a 30 mm slogging spanner, or in other words, a spanner designed to be hit with a hammer.

Differential with slogging spanner on the righthand bolt.

With the spanner placed around these bolts and many many hits with a lump hammer, this bolt finally began to loosen. With the bolt's removed, it is no surprise why it was such a pain to remove, given the large smooth concave contact area.

Complaining over though, the bolts did come out and with that, the differential cover fell away and I can at last check the internals. Upon opening the differential I was initially surprised that there was no paper gasket between the main housing and the cover, but Dr Google informed me that this is normal and instead a silicon gasket is used. Must make sure to add this to one of my future shopping lists.

First view of the opened differential – nice and oily.

Close up of the crown wheel.

After rotating the main crown wheel and inspecting these teeth along with the internal gears, everything seems to be in good order. There was no excess play in the output shafts.

Having had a precursory look, the cover can be placed back on with the smaller bolts which I took out last time. I will keep the large bolts out for now and give them a good clean before putting them back on.

Rear Hub Removal

With front hubs and brakes removed, I turned my attention to the rears. From the outset, this looks very similar to the front brakes, so should be easy. 

Rear corner assembly – before starting

Rear disc brake removal

The removal of the rear brake calipers and discs is almost identical to the front corners. Therefore only a summary of the steps is given below.

To remove the calipers undo the two allen headed bolts located at the back of the disc, which are contained within separate rubber tubes. With the calipers removed, the brake pads can easily be removed, or watch them fall out. The caliper carrier is fastened to the hub by two 15 mm bolts. The difference with the rear is that unlike the front these bolts have been wire locked together. Not sure why only the rears get this treatment, especially as the front brakes are more powerful. Now that the brake assembly is removed, the rear corner looks like this.

Image from the back of the IRS with the caliper carrier removed

Rear disc with the disc brake assembly removed

Not unsurprisingly the rear brake calipers are considerably smaller in size than the front brakes. They are however equally rusty and dirty, so will need a good clean. 

Both rear brake calipers and carriers

With the caliper carrier removed the disc can be removed by removing the grub screw. The grub screw on the near side was very difficult to remove, as the screwdriver head kept slipping. I did manage to get them out before totally stripping the head, but only just. These will certainly be replaced!

With the rear brake pads and discs removed, it is clear these are not in the same good condition as the front. As the images below show, there is significantly less meat on the pads and the discs have a very pronounced lip. Certainly, these will need to be replaced when building up the rear suspension on the AK chassis.

Rear brake disc and pad. Very little meat left

Notice the rim on the rear brake disc

Rear handbrake pads

Now that the rotors have been removed, I was slightly shocked to see that the handbrake is operated by internal drum brakes. Who would have thought that even in the 1990’s drum brakes were still used on Jaguars?

To remove the drum brakes first ensure that the self-adjuster at the top of the hub is fully screwed in. This reduces the tension placed on the pads making them 'easier' to remove. Then there are two NO. no. 5 allen headed clips which are held in place by a spring. These are removed by depressing the clip head and twisting free. With these removed and with a little more wiggling, the retaining springs holding the pads together can be unclipped. After removing one or both springs, the pads fall away from the hub. The last step is to detach the brake cable from the ‘fixing’ plate, by sliding out the middle pin. To avoid losing this small pin, I taped it back into the fixing bracket.

In hindsight, having removed the hub before tackling these drum brakes might have been easier, if possible...

Hub and IRS Removal

Now that all the brakes have been removed, the strip down of the hub and IRS really begins. For reference, I have referred to the following exploded diagram of the rear corner assembly which I found online.

Image from www.justjaguk.com/catalogue

To remove the hub there is a 27 mm nut which fastens the half shaft spline to the hub. These require some serious torque to remove. The near side nut required a week of regular WD40 spraying and then additional weight to resist the lifting of the differential when using the full extent of my up-cycled breaker bar.

With this nut loosened, but not fully removed, a good set of pullers is required to separate the half shaft from the IRS. Leaving the nut on ensures the whole assembly cannot fly off. This is another tip I remembered from Ed China.

Dirty rear hub removed from hub carrier

Luckily, all the races have stayed within the hub, which saved on the mess created. The only part which did fall off was the cogged wheel, which I believe is used by the ABS sensor to detect a differential wheel speed. This seems to be a press fit against the outside surface of the hub shaft and helps secure the hub within the IRS.

With the hub removed, I foolishly undid the IRS fulcrum shaft. This nut came loose relatively easily using the large breaker bar and the shaft itself came out with some persuasion. With the IRS away from the swing arm, the handbrake cable can now be removed. This is held in place by a semi-round plastic clip which sits just behind the hole for the handbrake cable. By rotating this clip, so its cut out is facing upwards you can gently pull this clip off.  Now the cable should just pull out from the IRS.

Inside view of the rear hub carrier

I then planned to remove the splash shield. This is fastened to the IRS with 4 no. 8 Allen headed bolts. These are obscured when the hub was fitted. However, there is a small cut out in the hub, which I assume is there to gain access to these bolts, but it is far too small for my sockets. I found the best way to remove them was to put the IRS back onto the lower swing arm, which prevented any rotational movement as I used my smaller breaker bar with an Allen key slotted inside to loosen them. With these four bolts removed the shield falls off from the IRS.

Removal of the rear splash shield

Now the shield is off, I can again remove the IRS from the swing arm. Having separated the major components from the rear swing arm, my work on this corner is done for now.

The layout of the disassembled rear corner

I will tackle the further breakdown of the half shafts and the hub carrier later.

Front Hub Strip Down

The first part to strip down from the heap of Jaguar parts, will be the removal of the front disc brakes and hubs. This is a very exciting first step echoed by the immortal phrase ‘How hard can this be?’. 

Brake discs and Calipers 

From an initial inspection, the front brakes look to be in reasonable condition with plenty of ‘meat’ left on the brake pads and the discs don’t appear to have much of a lip at the rim. These might be a candidate for saving… will have a closer look later. 

Image of front disc and pad after removal 

The front brakes are removed in two stages. First, there are two no. 7 Allen (Hex) key headed screws contained within a rubber tube behind each caliper. To access these, pop off the plastic cover from the rubber tube with a screwdriver and then with the Allen wrench these bolts are relatively easy to remove. By then pulling the caliper towards you and pressing the inboard brake pad to the rotor, you can push the brake piston back into its housing creating enough space to remove the caliper from the rotor. Of course, it’s obvious (with hindsight), that because the brake lines have been cut, when you squeeze the brake piston, brake fluid will come out of the brake line. I only realized this when I spotted an oil patch on the floor, luckily, I had put some newspaper down. 

Image of removed calipers 

With the calipers removed, the next step is to wiggle out the brake pads away from the caliper carrier. This leaves the rotors exposed with the caliper carriers as shown below. 

Front hub minus the brake pads and caliper

The next step is to remove the caliper carriers, which are each fastened by two 17 mm bolts through to the front upright (threaded holes). These bolts required a few goes with WD40 and a breaker bar. As a home DIYer, my choice of breaker bar went through several iterations. 

I have a breaker bar which came in my Halfords socket set, but it is not the longest at 180 mm and so struggles to shift some of these bolts. Definitely room for improvement in regards to length, in order to gain greater torque to remove the more stubborn nuts/bolts. A quick look online found a selection of breaker bars with a maximum length of 700 mm. Whilst I considered buying one, I thought I would try making my own, at least for the short term. I began with a spare piece of wood found in my garage and taped it to my breaker bar. This did work, but with limited results. I then spotted my old bench-press bar (2.2 m in length), which turns out to be a hollow tube that my breaker bar fits inside. Perfect! With my up-cycled breaker bar, removing these few bolts was straightforward. What was it Archimedes said? "With a lever, I will move the whole world" 

Original wooden breaker bar 

Comparison of an up-cycled breaker bar with the wooden breaker bar 

Up-cycled breaker bar being used to remove caliper carrier bolts 

The last part of the brake disassembly is to remove the rotor. This is simply by the removal of the small 'grub' screw found on the front of the disc. With this screw removed, the rotor then slides past the wheel studs. 

Front corner with the brake rotor removed 

To avoid losing the wheel nuts and the small grub screw I put them back on the front subframe. 

Hub disassembly 

After removing all the front brake parts, the hub is now exposed and is the next culprit to be removed. To guide me through this process I found an illustrative schematic of how this component is put together from the internet, shown below. 

Schematic of the front hub from http://www.justjagsuk.com 

So the first step is to use a flat head screwdriver to prise off the central hub cover. This is the dented, doomed part in the previous photo above. 

These next steps get very messy, due to the packing grease in the hub. With the doomed cover off there is a 15/16 nut, secured with a castellated cover and a split pin. The split pin unfolds easily with needle nose pliers and slides out. The castellated cover then slides off and lastly the nut below un-screws relatively easily. 

Front hub split pin and nut – Image from AK manual 

Now the hub assembly slides off, in my case, with very little force. As it comes off, a range of spacers and races will probably fall to the floor. Whilst I might not use them again, I will keep them safe so if I do replace them I know what I am looking for. 

Front hub removed

Behind the hub and its bearings, there is even more grease and a few more bearings within the cupped shaped housing. This casing is fastened to the main upright by three small TORX no.T30 headed bolts. With the vast amount of grease that packed this area, there is no need for WD40. 

Even after removing these bolts the housing and back plate did not come off easily. It was held in place with an oil seal, which as its name should suggest, is a tight fit and holds the housing in place. To remove the housing and backplate, I found it helpful to place a medium pry bar down between the hub housing and the plate and gently wiggle the housing off. As the housing comes off it brings with it the oil seal. This then allows the back plate to fall off the front corner exposing the front upright with its wishbones and ball joints. 

Front upright after brake and hub removal 

Having tackled the front breaks and hubs, next onto the rear to do the same.