1985 Jaguar XJ-S V12 HE

Good call on doing that with the pedal depressed...never thought of that. Obvious now you've said it.

The brakes will be getting a going over soon anyway (have new front discs and pads getting in the way in the garage waiting to be fitted), but doesn't make me any less apprehensive about disturbing the rears!

None of them look in bad shape at least.

Is the brake bleeding straightforward (barring any seized bits) on the XJS?

On my P38 it's a real old song a dance. Not difficult, just very long winded, thanks to ABS and traction control!

Wont be an issue - those lines are the feed lines, not the pressure side.

Now I have the air conditioning compressor clutch assembly in my hands it's time to start looking at getting the system recommissioned.

There are a couple of limitations in the system on this car which means I want to do a few checks before just bolting the new clutch on and sticking the belt back on.

The biggest of these is the lack of what are generally considered to be standard safety devices that we are used to be seeing on HVAC systems. Most notably pressure switches. Instead there is simply a thermal fuse on the compressor which cuts out if the compressor itself gets too hot. There's also no way to run the car with the A/C off unless the entire ventilation system is set to "off" - whenever *anything* on the heater is turned on, the A/C is running as the system on the XJ-S is a true automated climate control system...Quite unusual for a design from the 70s.

As such I wanted to do everything I could before getting things set up to give everything the best chance of working correctly. Obviously the very first thing that will happen once everything is back in place is it will be getting taken to someone with all the gear to be the remains of any residual charge recovered, leak tested etc and recharged. Before I go to that expense though I'd like to at least have some idea of what's in there and to be reasonably sure that it will pass the leak test. While the condenser looks like absolute hell, there was some pressure still in the system despite it not having been touched as far as I can tell since 2012, which has to be a good sign. Not very much pressure at all...but anything that's enough to move the gauges has to be considered at least vaguely hopeful on a system this old.

Given the state of this I was surprised to find anything in there!



I'm not kidding myself for a second...This condenser will need to be replaced at some point in the (probably not too distant) future. Aside from the fact that it's probably going to leak sooner than later, the heat rejection capacity will be greatly reduced in this state - and the system will already have taken a performance hit when it was converted from R22 to R134a back in 2012.

Having explained the situation to the garage I normally used for this sort of thing they agreed to do me a favour and stick a scoosh of nitrogen into the system for me so I could go around the car and do a check for any major leaks.

While it's hard to see the whole thing, there weren't any obvious leaks on the condenser, and watching the pressure it seems that we're not dropping massive amounts. This ties in with us still finding some pressure in the system. A dig around with the leak spray though did track down one obvious one in the engine bay. Give you two guesses where.

Yep...You remember those two connections on the line from the compressor to the condenser which are held on with jubilee clips which made me skin crawl as they have no place on any HVAC system beyond a condensate drain line?



Bubbly bubbly! Only one end though, the other side seems gas tight surprisingly enough. So we will need to get this line changed before we can look to get the system properly charged. Obviously we may well find more issues when we've actually got a decent head pressure on the system, but it's a start at least.

With that jubilee-clip line, can/will you reconfigure to use more appropriate hardware?

John

Ah yes, I'd forgotten this happened when I last tried to order one.



Followed a couple of days later by a "sorry we can't find one" letter and a refund.

There don't as far as my trawling of the web last night turned up, seem to be any available outside the US. Which given the price of shipping makes rebuilding the existing pipe make more sense.

Our local Pirtek branch have always been really helpful in the past, so I'll pull it off the car and see if they think they can rebuild it for me (or provide me the bits to do so). Shouldn't be difficult really... appropriately sized chunk of properly crimped hose with flare nut fittings, appropriate fittings to fit on the existing rigid line and we're done. So long as the rigid pipe isn't an oddball size we shouldn't have any problems.

I had the same hose repaired on my xjs 20 years ago, by a local A/C specialist, most of them have the tools to crimp new hoses. I've also considered buying one of the crimping sets from ebay, wouldn't take many repairs to earn it's keep.

Decided it would be fun to spend a couple of hours outside in unreasonable temperatures today arguing with the air con on the Jag. Said temperatures being the main reason for having moved it up the list.

Nobody this side of the Atlantic seems to have the compressor to condenser hose actually in stock, despite a number of places listing it. My local hydraulic guy I'd usually use for this sort of things is only doing trade work at the moment. Fair enough.

So I snugged up the hose clips a bit to see if it would do anything...leak immediately stopped as far as I can see. Did get a good couple of extra turns on it. We'll see if the pressure has dropped in the morning.

Next challenge. Excuse the rubbish photo, this was the only way I could see what I was up against because there's a bonnet in the way - whoever thought that front hinged bonnets were a good idea?!?



Getting the 14mm nut off the compressor pulley involved downright alarming levels of force but did eventually crack off.

Unfortunately that is as far as I got as apparently I finally need to actually buy a puller. The clutch assembly is well and truly stuck on the compressor shaft. Old school levering and swearing isn't going to cut it this time.

On the plus side the brake fluid leak does indeed appear to have been sorted by fitting the new hoses from the reservoir. Still bone dry now.





At least that's one thing I can tick off it looks like!

Will get a puller ordered and then resume battle with the air con. The bit I'm really not looking forward to is that I need to remove all the other belts again to put the air con one back on...that was so much fun last time.