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A blog about my 1989 Land Rover 90 (Defender). It's here so I don't forget all the stuff I've done to it and will also hopefully be a help to anyone else with similar issues!

Thursday 23 April 2009

Front hubs

After 2 of the drive member bolts shearing and the other ones looking likely to do the same I didn't want to risk spending a day trying to sort out out myself due to a lack of time! I asked my local mechanic to sort it out for me and also take a look at the front o/s hub as it sounded like the bearing was making a noise.

He managed to sort out the sheared bolts etc for me and discovered that the o/s front bearing was completely shot and had welded itself to the hub!!! Anyway, new bearing fitted and all is well again now :)

Sunday 5 April 2009

Grrrrr, not more sheared drive member nuts!!!

After the nightmare I had getting the rear nearside drive member nuts off I thought I better do some preventative maintenance and remove and coppaslip the fronts too. The offside front ones came off no problem and were greased, replaced and torqued up (65). The nearside ones weren't quite as easy and I only managed to remove two of them. Even after blasting them with WD40 and giving them some heat they wouldn't budge and when I put my large breaker bar on them I managed to shear 2 of them off so far - not good!

Looks like I'll be stripping down and rebuilding the front hubs etc now too, arghhh!!!

Saturday 4 April 2009

Rear bump stop and reverse light switch

The reverse light stopped working a couple of days ago which made it "interesting" reversing down our dark lane to the garage at night. It would come on as you put it into reverse and then go out virtually straight away. I looked up how it works and there is just a switch that screws into the top rear of the gearbox. This is dead easy to get to by removing the middle seat cushion section and unscrewing the cover beneath that. It just required another full turn clockwise into the gearbox housing and now works perfectly again :) While I had the cover off I used the opportunity to give the handbrake mechanism a good clean and grease too.

I noticed that the rubber from the offside rear bump stop was missing so thought I better replace it. I got the new part (basically a big chunk of rubber moulded to a metal bracket) and hoped it would just be a case of unbolting the old one (just the rubber was missing)... I managed to get both bolts half undone but as they are well rusted on and with a socket on the bottom and open ring spanner on top (can't get anything else on) I can't get enough pressure to remove them anymore :( Looks like a job for the angle grinder when I have time to attempt it again!

Friday 3 April 2009

Back in business :)

Well today I managed to get hold of some replacement driver member bolts. They were a pain to get hold of though as 3 local Landy places (including main dealer!) didn't have any in stock!!! In the end I got some off an old axle one of the Landy garages had laying around :)

So now everything has been rebuilt so let's just hope the lock up problem doesn't reappear!!!