bill van snorkle

I doubt there is any need for that. just fit genuine chrome or Teflon ones. If any of that rubbish you and your friends have broken is genuine Rover stuff then that will be the last straw for me. I'd scrap my 3 LandRovers and go have a talk with Mr Toyota !

My guess with the synchro problem is that the 1st/2nd synchro hub has broken the corners of the slots where the spring and ball sliding blocks ride in. If the sliding blocks twist in the slots they cant evenly push against the bronze synchro cones. The contents of the drain plug should tell the story.

There are a lot more 80 series Toyotas here in OZ, and the offroad conditions are probably harsher overall. The front differential is significantly smaller and weaker than the earlier 60 series etc, and having reverse cut crownwheel and pinion teeth, they have been known to break when reversing up steep hills, out of ditches or when in reverse gear, snatch recovering other stuck vehicles. This issue apparently doesn't crop up often in the UK, from judging Dan and Si's recommendations. That said they are probably still stronger than a Rover diff, although the Rover front CW&P is stronger when backing up than when driving forward.

Isn't there a minimum British Standard for quality that non genuine parts suppliers have to adhere to, at least on components critical to vehicle safety?As Robert suggested earlier, the suppliers will not voluntarily stand up and admit there is a problem due to the massive costs involved with recall/replacement, plus reimbursement of any labour charges, and the odd insurance claims for vehicle damage or personal injury due to failure of these POS. If you UK enthusiasts want your LandRover part suppliers to ever lift their game, I think there is a possible legal opportunity here with the swivel issue to expose these shonky operators, and to either force them out of business, or force them to cease stocking and selling unsafe substandard garbage.

Within lr4x4's large membership, i' am surprised there haven't been any engineering types with mettalurgical knowledge that hasn't commented on Mr Noisey's photos re their opinion of materials used. I'm no engineer but it's obvious to me that those balls are not only 'not fit for service', but are downright dangerous and the firms selling them are criminally negligent in not having critical to safety components like this subjected to qualified engineering analyses before putting them on the market. One would hope that this thread doesn't die and the subject forgot until some poor sod crashes his Landrover into a bus full of nuns and school kids ! It really is that serious ! With almost 1000 views for this thread , I don't think too many of us here are taking issue as seriously as it deserves to be !

. Any engineering shop can tell in a minute if the balls are made from steel or iron. If they determine iron then a relatively simple test will determine if it is nodular iron or cheap coarse grain grey iron. The EN15 sig on the series ball is a material spec that I believe was a change made to address the issue of the ball splitting just outboard of the bolt flange on series 2B forward control and normal control 1 ton LandRovers with 9.00x16 tyres, but were sometimes fitted to regular models.It wasn't entirely successful on the FC's.

I would very much doubt that genuine Teflon balls would be made from anything inferior to genuine chrome balls, those broken ones are rubbish grey iron and the agents should be banned from selling them in the UK and forced to recall all the ones they sold for a full refund. Someone is going to get killed someday due to rubbish like that !

I'm just hypothesising now but the base diameter of the chrome balls may be slightly smaller than the Teflon ones. The triple chroming process probably adds a bit of thickness, and if you chrome a Teflon ball maybe it would end up too large for the seal to wipe effectively.

I actually use a 3/4" rose joint for the third kingpin bearing on WildFing. Series bottom swivel pins are pressed in so I just had new ones made that were twice as long.The rose joint screws into a short hollow bar with a r/h/thread on one end and a L/h/thread on the other to give some preload, like an adjustable track rod.

The coiler swivel balls are smaller, and there is less metal surrounding the swivel bearings, but they are actually stronger in the 'throat/flange' area than series balls, which have a 3" diameter hole for the inner halfshaft bearing, and this reduces the wall thickness in that critical location. Series 2a and 2B forward control vehicles regularly split the swivel balls in that location. I deleted the halfshaft bearing on WildFings series swivel balls and welded 3"ID x 2 1/2"OD inserts in the bearing bore to cope with the leverage of portals.

For those whose funds can't stretch to the High strength items,Try dismantling normal CV joints and getting to work on the components with a die grinder to remove all the sharp edges and corners of the bell, cage and star. I have had good results doing this on a couple of vehicles now that were frequent consumers of CV's.

As As I just posted on the 'replacement parts continuing problems' thread, most here would be highly unlikely to break genuine swivel balls and are more likely to shear the flange bolts off before any shock loadings were severe enough to damage the balls themselves. If anyone is having issues with the flange bolts working loose or stretching, then a solution would be to fit a brace with a third swivel bearing as Maxidrive and Tibus supplied with their bolt on Portal housings. If there were enough interest in these, perhaps Simon could be persuaded to knock out a few sets?

To put some perspective on how poor Mr Noisey's busted balls are....In my former life I have seen the result of quite a few LR/RR front ends after severe mishaps and collisions, including one that the l/h/front wheel slammed into the concrete safety wall on a bridge at speed. In the more severe cases the bolts fastening the swivel ball to the banjo housing sheared off with slight deformation to the ball flange. On a 110 County the bore for the top railko bush was quite deformed into an egg shape but the metal had not cracked. Also of interest should be that a few Maxidrive and Tibus Portal drop boxes, together with 35" tyres have been fitted to standard original swivel balls, albeit with a brace with few problems.The leverage effect of portals would be close to and probably exceeds the equivalent of running 46" tyres.

'Land Rover', Giving new meaning to the term Off Road Vehicle. Being stuck at home with an immobile or defective truck can get quite boring.

As for preparation to rechroming. Can't remember for certain, but I think strippng of chrome is just reversing the electro chemical process of applying the chrome, and is the responsibility of the plating works.

Best to ask on the LandRover forum of Pirate 4x4.com .

Those balls look like they are made of cast iron, not forged or cast steel. Would you do a grinder test on a piece for us ? Short sparks=iron, longer sparks =steel.Even a whack with a hammer will tell if iron or steel. Iron will snap with little deformation. The problem with LandRovers is that many of the original components are of marginal design in the first place, but good metallurgy gives them an acceptable lifespan. Skimping on material specification and/or heat treatment is a recipe for poor service life at best, or catastrophic fatal disaster at worse. The manufacturer and supplier of those swivel balls should be drawn and quartered, never mind named and shamed.

I would PMSL Jeff, but then I think that could all very well be happening to me. My RRC clutch saga has cost me several days that I will never get back. Time for me to go over to the 'dark side' me thinks.

It's not so much the lack of enthusiasm for building. I can drive my standard ish looking Stage One V8 half way round Australia without getting pulled over for roadside checks even once. Yet a recent 100 mile road trip in a mates nicely modified and conservatively driven 40 series saw us being hauled over twice at random breath testing stations for vehicle and engineering certificate inspection. So much time lost and frustration just to travel a hundred miles. Becoming a regular occurrence going by the reports of other 4wders. Building a vehicle just to use on private land gets a bit old after a while, especially as we have so many fantastic areas to explore.

I prefer the 'Gold tooth on a rat' analogy. Why a Defender of all things ? I thought Ellen liked Portia !

Cab looks quite good and repairable Dan. Are you making a complete chassis ? Workshop looks great. Is that at home, or at work? I will very soon have free unfettered access to a similarly equipped shop, but I'm afraid my drive and enthusiasm is not as strong as it once was.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I finally had some success by leaving the vehicle on the sideslope, where it would seem that fluid gradually trickled down to the slave cylinder and allowing air to come back up into the master cyl. Occasionally during the day I propped the pedal in the down position with a stick for an hour or so in the hope that a little pressure would force the air to the top a little quicker. Anyway this morning I have a fully operation clutch, and I haven't touched the bleed screw yet. Not sure I am game to either.

Removed the slave cyl the other day. was in good order but gave bore a light hone and fitted a new rubber anyway.

The eccentric pushrod bush allows for sufficient freeplay adjustment, I parked the vehicle on a left side down 30 degree sideslope over night, and this morning there is a very slight improvement in pedal feel, but nowhere near good enough. I'll come back to it once this heatwave passes in a day or two . Lucky that it is just a spare vehicle and I don't depend on it.

Would be a bit difficult to trace names of victims involved in fatal 4wd incidents going back 40 or more years, particular those related to a specific component failure. Whilst halfshaft failure may not have been that common,It must have been common enough over here in Oz for Toyota to change to full floating across the range, whilst other countries continued to get the old non flaters. A halfshaft failure only has to happen once in the wrong place at the wrong time and it's all over Red Rover. The Hilux style is fine, and a 30 spline shaft on a relatively light truck is not likely to fail very often anyway.