The chap who recently acquired J990TMO, which has had a few mentions on here over the years,
has been having very similar frustrating problems. Unfortunately he's over on FB, so good luck
tracking down the posts, it's like a haystack over there.

You might try a block of hardwood of manageable size, drill a hole close-fitting on the pipe, and split it
so it can be clamped like a collet on the pipe, and allow you to tap the pipe axially. As the union has
partly unscrewed, there ought to be a bit of axial clearance to enable the pipe to shift.

Might you be able to transfer the intermediate bracket from the old to the plain new ones?

My replacements parted like that pic after quite a short time in service, with the car jacked up. I noted the suspension does adopt a pretty extreme degree of camber when drooping without any load. But if that's considered a MOT fail condition, I couldn't understand why polybushes with an unbonded c...

You need to tell us who the good guys are (in due course)!

Trouble with engine mounts is that they never get a rest. Almost worth considering putting a jack under the engine when you know the car's going to be resting for an extended period, like over winter. The 1.4 engine mounts (gearbox end) are fiendishly complex and not amenable to swapping an insert i...

I did mine off the car too, which allowed me to clamp the shaft in the vice on my heavy work bench. I didn't clout the back of the CV joint directly, I used a scrap piece of 2x1 timber, end-on. Getting it back on after changing the boot was the real pain, as I was trying to compress the snap ring to...

It's an internal spring wire ring which lives in a annular groove in the splined section.

C6Dave wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 3:24 pm When you look at the cap from below (tank side) in that hole in the middle there is a spring inside, so wonder if that is the vacuum release.

I'm pretty sure the spring acts on the floating 'ears' to set the clamping force of the cap.

Mine does the same (1991 non-cat). I used a smear of rubber-friendly grease on the sealing ring to make opening easier.