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© 2001 Brian F. Schreurs
Even we have a disclaimer.

With some brake work looming, we set out to remove the cage from the Paradise Garage 1985 Jaguar XJ-S. Ours seems to have lasted all this time without ever coming apart, because many of the bolts and nuts were still covered in undercoating. Great. That'll keep it interesting.

Marking the driveshaft.

Just for grins, before doing any work we measured the car's static ride height. You never know when this could come in handy. We found our car's front crossmember-to-ground height was 5"; the front bumper-to-ground was 13-1/4"; the rear cage-to-ground was 7", and the rear bumper-to-ground was 16-1/4". We're not claiming that's normal or anything; we're just taking note of it for future reference.

Remove the lugnuts. They're 7/8". Jack up the car by the bottom of the cage. Get it up fairly high so you have plenty of room to work. Although it seems obvious to support the car by the rear jack points, in fact the jackstands will get in the way while you fiddle with the radius arms. Support the car by the axles for now.

Crawl under the car and disconnect the driveshaft from the differential. There are a total of four bolts with nuts; all of them are 14mm. On our car, two of them required a little heat from a butane torch to loosen.

This is the radius arm just after being separated from the chassis.

When you've got three bolts removed and the fourth loosened a bit, pick one of the bolt holes, take two tiny zip tie straps, and put one strap on the driveshaft and one on the pinion. That way no matter what gets twisted, whacked, or painted, you'll know which way the driveshaft goes relative to the differential (it matters for balance reasons).

The next obstacle is the pair of radius arms. Those are the arms that extend from the lower swingarms forward to the body. These radius arms are each held in place by one lousy bolt, which in turn is reinforced by a steel safety strap with a second bolt. It looks simple, but trust us when we emphatically say: nuh-uh.

Cut and remove the safety wire that goes from the radius arm bolt to the safety strap. Then, remove the 14mm bolt that holds the safety strap to the chassis, if you can find it under all the gunk. Scrape it clean, then blast it with PB Blaster, then blast it with a butane torch. Then it should come out easily enough.

With the safety strap now loose, it's possible to remove the 16mm bolt running through the center of the radius arm bushing. Again, PB Blaster and heat go a long way in making the bolt mobile. The safety clamp will come off with the bolt.

As far as removing the radius arm from the chassis, an understanding of what you're up against will help greatly. The radius arm contains a bushing; inside that bushing is a metal donut; the metal donut is mated directly to a metal mount pad on the chassis. This means that rust has a good chance of making this joint exceptionally difficult to remove. The rubber is very flexible, making it all the more difficult to get sufficient leverage to pop it free. We tried prybars and hammers with no success; ultimately, we used a piece of 2x4 cut at an angle, wedged between the radius arm and the body, and forced into position with a 3-lb. hammer. This plays hell on the undercoating, but ours is full of holes anyway. It doesn't seem to hurt the actual sheetmetal though; the wood gives before the metal does. The wood was cut at about a 25-deg. angle. You can send the royalty fees directly to us.

Left: the passenger-side emergency brake cable connection. Right: same thing, driver-side.

Once both radius arms are free, you can move the jackstands to the reinforced pads just forward of the radius arms. Get the car as high up as possible, because it's quite cozy under there. This is even more critical if you're planning to roll the cage out the back rather than the side, because the trunk will have to clear. If you have a double-wide garage, it's a lot easier to just pull it out sideways. But more on that later.

Disconnecting the emergency brake isn't hard. On the passenger side, just pull on the clevis of the brake cable until it pulls clear enough to slip the cable through the gap. On the driver side, push the cable housing outboard till the cable can pass through the gap. You can pull it a bit with a Vise-Grip, or push it through with a 1/8" punch.

Here's the bracket where we disconnected the hydraulic brakes.

There are so many opportunities to disconnect the hydraulic brake system that we spent some time figuring out which approach would work best. Ultimately, we decided to disconnect the brake line at the chassis joint, not at the cage joint, because the chassis mounting point comes off with the subframe mount. That means the rubber hose comes out with the cage and will be easier to inspect. The ferrule is 1/2" and the other side is probably not 15mm, but that wrench fits. Heat and penetrant, again, help to persuade long-fastened fasteners, but watch out for the evil tricks gravity plays on penetrating oil.

Next up is to disconnect the exhaust system. The service manuals would like us to disconnect the tailpipes from the over-axle pipes, but 100% chance that joint's not coming apart intact. Instead, we decided to take a chance on removing the tailpipes, resonators, and over-axle pipes all as a unit, in conjunction with the cage itself. Forward of the cage, each muffler is held on by three bolts. They are all 1/2". The stainless steel ones on the driver side came off without much trouble. The non-stainless ones on the passenger side had to be cut off. We used a fiberglass-reinforced cutting wheel on our Dremel to slice two of them; the third had clearance issues and was dispatched with a hacksaw.

Once you're done cutting through your muffler bolts, it's time to work on the cage itself. Go get whatever it is that you're planning on catching the cage with, and put it in position. We're gonna go on the record right now and say that you need a scissors-style transmission jack. It's a non- hydraulic, wrench-actuated jack that lifts and lowers with a scissors motion. The plate is wide (designed for transmissions after all) and can be adjusted for tilt; it even comes with a strap if you can figure out something to strap it to. It was practically made for this job. You want one. Trust us. Get one now. We'll wait.

One of the four cage mounts, still covered in undercoating.

Back? Great! Now, set up your transmission jack well-forward of the center of the cage. This is because the differential is well-forward, and it's gonna be the prime influence on whether you manage to balance the cage or drop it and break something. Have the jack at the ready, as if it were holding the cage up now instead of getting ready to catch it.

There are a total of four cage-to-chassis mounts. Each mount has two bolts that pass through the chassis. You'll see them. Kinda like two V-shaped plates of steel with rubber bits sandwiched between them. Kinda. Anyway, the front two are pretty easy to reach, but the back two are less obvious. They are all accessible though, so quit worrying about it and take some stuff apart! The plus side of the rear ones is that because they're harder to reach, they're also better protected from the elements, and aren't as bad to remove.

All of the nuts and bolts are 14mm. Most, if not all, will need to be scraped clean of dirt and undercoating, then heated with the butane torch, then blasted with PB Blaster. After that it won't be so bad getting them out! Figure on each mount taking about an hour, if your car is as neglected as ours.

One of the slip-fit tailpipe hangers.

We got lucky with the balance of the cage; it didn't try to fall. We lowered it until it started binding on the forward mufflers; after clearing them, we lowered some more until the rear resonators started binding. Then, by shuffling the passenger side rearward and driver side forward, we freed up the driver resonator. We reversed to free up passenger resonator.

After that it was a simple matter of lowering the cage and scooting it out the side. Easy, really. Once the cage is down toward the ground, it becomes patently obvious that it's easier to go sideways than backwards, so we didn't even try the other way; with our transmission jack, changing direction is no big deal at all. Just a little push and you're on your way.

At last, the cage it out from under the Jaguar, in all its complex glory!

With the cage out, the fun begins! We dunno what you needed yours out for -- but ours needs everything! Bearings, U-joints, shocks, brakes, you name it, the cage is getting it. We're even looking at adding a fresh coat of paint to make it look purty for all the field mice. Going back and looking at what is actually involved in this cage removal illustrates just how easy it is, provided someone responsible was there before you to apply anti-seize where warranted. We didn't have the benefit of that this time around, but now that we've done it the hard way, we'll be extra careful about reassembly. Something for you to think about as well.