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 :)

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!!!

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!

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!!!

Rear axle all back together :)

Typically I hurt my back on Saturday morning so couldn't do anything to the Landy over the weekend :(

Anyway, I got under it today and have rebuilt both rear brakes (and freed off the stuck adjusters, cylinders etc) and got the new outer bearing seal fitted (damaged the old one removing it to check bearing). Then I got both half shafts back in and rear hubs reassembled and fitted so all sorted now.

The only thing left to do is to get some replacement drive member bolts as 4 of the 5 sheared when removing them and my local Landy place didn't have any.

Diff back in, prop back on

I hadn't had chance to do any work on the Landy until today but had got the new prop bolts so at least got the diff back in and propshaft back on today. More work over the weekend and we should be back in business!

Diff removed and checked

Well I decided that I may as well completely strip the whole rear axle down so at least I know the state of everything...

I'd already removed the drivers side wheel, drum, hub assembly and half shaft without too much bother so thought I'd do the same with the passenger side. Unfortunately this didn't appear to have every been off before and 4 of the 5 drive member bolts sheared off as soon as I gave them any welly :( This then took 2 of us nearly 4 hours to remove :(((

Anyway, got that off and checked all that side. It seemed fairly ok but the brake cylinder did appear siezed on one side. The half shaft etc was then removed on this side too so we could take the diff out.

The diff was fairly easy to remove as it just needs the rear prop bolts to be undone and prop moved out of the way. The bolts were pretty knackered though so I'll have to get some new ones that aren't rounded! Then there are just a load of bolts around the diff housing which came off without any bother once cleaned up. After that then the diff just came straight out and we checked it on a bench and all was well with no real wear on it at all.

Now I'm completely confused as there doesn't appear to be any real reason for the lock up which is worrying! At least I now know how everything works on the rear axle and have cleaned, adjusted, and renewed bits where needed - just have to put it all back together when I get some new parts...