[xj-s] Upper Steering Column and Ignition cylinder

[sean.straw+Jaguar@mail.professional.org (Sean Straw)]

Argh!

A couple of weeks ago, I received a new upper steering column for my XJS -
the horn was inoperative when I purchased her, and I quickly diagnosed it
to a faulty connection in the column (always grounded): I reconnected the
rest of the works (the horn itself was originally disconnected at the
horn), and put a vacuum boot over the bullet plug that connects to the
lower of the two steering column straps.  Then put it on my list of things
to fix when I got the time.

Since I was run off the road last week by some pickup-driving moron who
chose to take two lanes at once to make a freeway exit (one of which was
occupied by me at the time), fixing the horn became a priority.  Today, I
went at the task of pulling it out and replacing it.  The toughest part of
getting the column out was disconnecting the various multiple-conductor
plugs from the ignition and the (separatley removed) turn/wiper switches.

There is a special place reserved in hell for the the person who designed
the upper mounting - two bolts at the top of the column which hold it to
the frame, with separate nuts in a gawd-awful place to reach when it comes
time to adjust the column.

So I got it out and soon realized two things:

	1. The replacement column from Jaguar Heaven was actually missing the
	bullet plug recepticle for the upper ground plug.  You know - one of the
	two connectors directly relating to the HORN, the reason for replacing
	the steering column.  No problem scavenging this part from my original
	column (which I'd hoped to diagnose and eventually repair), but GEEZ,
	the guys over at JH could have confirmed that all the parts were there
	- particularily when THEY KNEW the reason I was ordering it was
	BECAUSE of a horn failure.

	2. The ignition cylinder was held into the column by two things that
	appeared to be rivets.  Damn, these things are never intended to come
	apart easy, are they?

The replacement column appeared unscathed in the easier to access of the
two holes where these rivets were, but the second (as you drive - the one
facing the firewall rather than straight down), was fairly well mangled.
As it was, I drilled out one (easy enough to access with a drillpress), but
had to resort to a dremel and a grinding bit to get the more difficult one
out (suprise - the same one that looked pretty banged up on the replacement
column).  After getting the cylinder out, I realized that these two
'rivets' were in fact some form of bolt - I tapped a 1/8" hole into the
cylinder lock housing and extracted a 1/4" fine thread from it.  The other
hole was a bit mangled to do this with (as I'd been operating on the
assumption that they were rivets and had drilled a bit more of it out).  If
I had it all to do over again, I'd tap the easy one to get to and extract
it, and the more difficult one (the upper mounting bracket is in the way of
accessing the thing directly with a drill), I'd take a dremel cutting disc
and cut a slot in the top, and attempt to unscrew it (they're pretty beefy
underneath, so you should be able to cut a pretty serious notch in the
top).  The centre of both of these rivet looking things appears to be a
broken-off pin - as if there'd been a nut head on it, and under sufficient
torque, it breaks off, leaving a security nut in place.  To replace these,
I threaded a 1/4" fine bolt through the one that was unscathed, and
threaded the column HOUSING (not the lock cylinder itself) with a 5/16"
coarse (didn't have a fine tap on hand) and used a 5/16" coarse allen-head
set screw to hold it in (the same could have been used for both except that
I didn't come prepared with two 1/2" or longer length 1/4" fine set screws).

While the column was out, I re-plumbed the A/C vent - the blue rubber hose
that goes to the blower housing on the outside wall to two round fittings
on the A/C housing and has a metal pipe hooked in it to boot.  This had
come loose on a prior under-dash episode: the box-end was held in with duct
tape, which I pulled out when I saw it, but could not get enough of a
hand-hold to put the thing back over the vent lip.  I'd taken it out and
thoroughly cleaned off the sticky adhesive residue from the tape (some
bio-friendly stuff called Disolv-It, which works REALLY well).  After
getting it back in (getting it over the three most out of reach corners,
then using effectively a SHORT piece of 90' bent coat hanger wire to pull
it over the nearest corner), I gripped it in place with a length of plastic
wirelock which I had looped around the hose before fitting it into place.

That done, putting the steering column back in place wasn't all that
difficult - save the alignment of the ignition cylinder.  Since the
steering lock is held into place primarily by a 1/4" replacement bolt to
the original, and the 5/16" is merely a set-screw holding it in place (as
if the single bolt shouldn't be enough), I can't see that that SHOULD have
affected the alignment much, but the ignition cylinder is a tiny bit low -
enough so that the ignition facia doesn't want to sit in the mounting quite
right, and the top edge closest to the steering column is bent downwards.
I spent a miserable 45 minutes (US measurement) trying to re-align the
steering column to get it to fit just right.  No luck.


If anyone has pointers on how to get the ignition cylinder to line up
right, I'd love to hear them.  In the meantime, my ignition facia looks
like crap.

---                             <http://jaguar.professional.org/>
Sean Straw                      '88 Jaguar XJSC 5.3L V12
Marin County, California        '69 Buick GranSport 455 V8

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