bill van snorkle

Yeah I bought 'WildFing' pre named too ! But she was called 'Spawn of Antichrist' back then so I changed it. She still remembers her heritage on occasion though.

Thanks Wayne. Admins censured me at a very bad and intolerant time in my life, so I left the forum, nuff said. I caught your RA thread after Googling portal axles, which took me to Chooks thread, re the problems he was having.. It appears by the photos that you are getting almost as much front articulation as the drag link ball joint angularity will allow, and front/rear balance is just about spot on. If as you say, handling is better and there is little axle tramp/hop on rocky climbs or under heavy braking, then my original reservations are unfounded. How much angularity are you getting from your rear A frame ball joint , is it a standard one ? The degree of articulation on my truck, likely doesn't really improve traction any further than what you have achieved here. The extra articulation just compensates for it being a SWB in regards maintaining balance stability on extremely twisty terrain. Cheers.

Sorry to read of your mis fortune. But that's what you get for giving your LandRover the same name as a Monty Python character.

With most Chain drive transfercases, the chain only has to drive the front wheels, and on vehicles with selective 4wd at least, the chains generally last the life of the vehicle. On the BW/Rover unit the chain powers both fr/rear axles, so is subjected to greater strain and higher wear rates. Heat generation of chain drives in hotter climes can also be a concern. I used to know a bloke who regularly and quite successfully campaigned a 4spd LT95 110 in the Australian Safari, and he claimed that the Mitsubishi factory team had a Canter 3 ton 4x4 Support truck loaded with Gearboxes and transfercases that were changed nightly due to the Chain drives overheating under racing conditions.I don't think the Borg Warner units are any better equipped to shed excess heat than the Mitsubishi units, and may be worse in low range due to the BW's having planetary reduction.

Low Ranger is a regular on AULRO forums and there is quite a lengthy thread on these Superior brand RA's on the 'Technical Chatter' sub forum on that site. I tend to agree with Soren on this though.I don't see how anything that gives more flex with radius arms can adequately control axle tramp at the limits of traction. Standard RA's and bushings don't control it well enough under certain conditions IMO. The Superior arms use larger more compliant Nissan Patrol bushings as well. An interesting comparison would be these Superior arms to the One Link from Cambridge Engineering, was it? I believe the Superior Arms are, or will be approved for fitting to registered, road going vehicle in Australia, so would have met various State Authorities handling /safety requirements.

My Zenith carb would run all day on that attitude. Tilting the vehicle on the same angle in the opposite direction is where it gets a bit iffy.

If the viscous unit is in fact a differential that uses viscous fluid and perforated discs in a similar way to a conventional LSD uses clutch packs, then IMO this would explain why my customer lost all drive once his front half shaft let go. As I vaguely recall, viscous units either fail locked solid, or open like a conventional differential, therefore if one loses its effectiveness over time and fails open, it will become just like the centre diff of an LT230 minus the ability to manually lock it. Would anyone really want to take a Borg Warner equipped 4wd into conditions where reliability is paramount ?

I don't know, you may or may not be correct. It would make more sense to me to design the viscous coupling like you described, although it wouldn't give true differential action for the claimed superior control for the borg Warner unit on slippery roads. The customer in my post above, said that after the front axle broke, there was no drive to the rear axle either, and once the new front axle was installed, everything was back to normal. From his description of the terrain, and his saying that the Rangey was performing better than the Patrol before the half shaft snapped, I would think it unlikely that the Rangey was doing it all in front wheel drive only.

There may have been further issues Bowie, but if there was it never showed up before or after the halfshaft broke and was replaced. And those further issues, if they existed, were in the viscous coupling, which the LT230 doesn't have. Experience with viscous couplings is that some fail locked and some fail open.

Soren, is there any angle that the SU carb is not happy on ? I am quite happy with my Zenith carb after resurfacing it around 15 years ago. The only angles that it is not happy on is steep left side down, that would put a standard LR on its roof, and dropping down into creek beds etc where the angle exceeds 40 degrees or so. Other than that it has been a reliable 'set and forget' unit.

The Americans reckon the LT230 is stronger and more dependable. Advance Adaptors, the US manufacturer of 'Atlas'aftermarket transfercases, claim that a locked LT230 is capable of handling up to 1000 horsepower. The 230 doesn't suffer chain wear and stretch, and has a positive difflock instead of depending on viscous friction. This translates into what I will call "get you home ability" when some of the other Landrover weaknesses rear their ugly heads. To illustrate, here is an example. A customer of ours around 11 years ago was travelling through the high country on rough, wet and steep bush tracks in his borg Warner equipped RangeRover, in company with a friend driving a GQ Nissan Patrol. While the Range Rover was mechanically intact, it was handling the conditions more competently than the Patrol, so the viscous coupling was certainly providing drive to both front and rear differentials. However it wasn't too long before the Rangey snapped one of the tiny inner front halfshafts at the Cv joint, at which point the viscous coupling didn't have the capacity to direct the drive to the rear differential, so no wheel drive. We are talking distance and isolation from civilization that is not possible to find in the UK, and as the conditions were too severe for the vehicle to be towed, it had to be repaired on the spot after removing the complete swivel assembly, driving it to the nearest town, where a courier could pick it up and transport it 250KM to my workshop and back again after I repaired it to be refitted by another mechanic hired to do the job. Our customer estimated the all up cost, including loss of wages for the week plus bush hotel accommodation etc etc to be around $2000. If he had an LT230 he could have locked the centre diff, fitted his mud/snow chains to the rear wheels and driven out, even if the Patrol may have needed to assist on some of the steeper sections.

You are correct. But as you can see, the portal brace is 3/8" thick and required longer studs on the outer 2 holes. Lacking longer dowell bolts at the time I moved the other original dowell stud to the other inner hole. Anyway, I now have 4 x M10 dowell bolts and lock tabs on the replacement, The oversize swivel pin hole in the Stage One casting would have caused an unequal sharing of the load on the studs. The replacement is a neater fit, and as there is no need to have the bottom steering arm easily removable, the unit can be more permanently assembled with high strength Loctite.

What misalignment are you referring to Snagger ? The bottom swivel pin is a straight one piece shaft, longer than the original and replaces the original, in addition to providing a pivot for the rose joint. It is much harder to machine an out of true shaft than a straight one, and the pin reads true on both ends with a dial indicator when I swing the arm in a lathe. Even if the rose joint was manufactured out of true, the pin is a neat but sliding fit inside it and can turn inside the ball.The brace between the portal box and the swivel is fastened by the 2 outer studs, which are undamaged nor their threaded holes. The cracks emanate from the 2 inner studs, which were dowell studs and obviously bore the brunt of the steering shear forces prior to me fitting the strut between the steering arm and portal box. Regardless, I have to work with what I have, and having the actual components in my hands as opposed to mere photos, I am better able to ascertain why the failure occurred and how to prevent it occurring in the future. With the backups I put in place, the swivel assembly was still rigid and probably would have survived indefinitely had I not been determined to track down the persistant source of oil seepage that has plagued that swivel assembly for the past decade. The thicker stiffer oil seal retainer, plus dowell bolts everywhere and deburring stress concentrators should optimise the strength of the basic design. Thanks for your interest, but as you say, we will agree to disagree on the affects of parallel steering vs Ackerman angles. According to the book on suspension principals that I have," Ackermans theory is based on a false premise, as he ignored the slip angles that a tyre develops when cornering". Large section, low pressure offroad tyres develop much greater slip angles than the tyres back in Ackermans day. I could have, and still can easily convert back to standard Ackerman angles if I was unhappy with the result, but after extensive testing with and without (5 minutes work to change the trackrod ) I was convinced.

The lower king pin is used for the drag link. the upper kingpins do the track rod. The thing stopping me from doing that Soren is insufficient space within the confines of the wheel rim, and that it is not permissible to make ones own steering arms here. And it's not the arms that need to be stronger on later vehicles, its the studs. I have sheared the steering arm studs on a normal non portalled series 3 when winching out of a deep hole without bending the steering arm.If you plot the stress path from the steering arm , through the strut to the portal box, you will see that this does relieve the studs of much of the shearing force from steering input. At any rate I am now convinced that the crack started in the one thousand odd miles before I introduced the strut between the steering arm and portal box, and I just didn't pick it up all those years ago. I'll let you know if I am correct in another decade or so.Lol. PS. a right hand side steering arm from a left hand drive series 3 would allow me to fit it on top, thus relieving the bottom studs from steering shear forces also. But I haven't got one, hence the short strut to the portal box.

The 3rd kingpin is 19mm heat treated 4140 and also replaces the original, and I couldn't make it flex if I tried. You missed (I didn't mention) that the strut is adjustable with a left and right hand thread for pre tensioning purposes.It is also angled upwards towards the axle, which places the bolts and swivel pin bracket in compression because the rose joint slides up the king pin when the rod is tensioned.As I mentioned earlier, if I remove the top swivel pin altogether I still can't rock the assembly even with the leverage of a 36" diameter tyre. Try that with a standard axle for comparison.

Thank you Michele. These photos were taken some time ago after I fitted the stiffening rod between the steering arm and the portal box, and at the time I didn't notice the crack on the bottom of the swivel casting emanating from the inner front bolt hole, which is just visible if one clicks on photo number 2. Anyway, it should be clear that I haven't taken any short cuts when it came to compensating for the extra leverage applied by portal hubs . The weld on the ear on photo number 4 is strong enough but isn't pretty because my petrol powered 240 volt generator set had a bit of a cough part way through the weld. I will re do it while I am fitting the 'new improved' swivel housing.

I would need to fit an extra/extra crawler box to the truck to drive any slower than I have been and presently do. Snagger,when I study the complete swivel assembly and imagine the stress path from the vehicles corner weight acting upon the bottom swivel pin, due to king pin inclination alone, I see additional shear forces being applied to the steering arm studs in addition to the shear forces from steering push and pull. Further more I see the bottom swivel pin subjected to far greater loads than the top one, even without portals. In fact, when I remove my top swivel pin altogether, I can't rock the road wheel at all, due to \the extra support that the 3rd king pin provides. Additionally, the outer 2 swivel pin studs are linked to the portal box by a stiffening bracket, which also prevent the studs from stretching over time. The nature of and direction of the break certainly suggests it is the shear forces applied by the steering arm that is the cause of my issues, and that the crack had already started before I made and fitted the stiffening rod from the redundant trackrod end socket of the steering arm to the portal box. Because I am pants at posting pics here, I will ask Michele or O'teunico to transfer the photo of my assembly from my facebook page to here, so that you can see the extra bracing I fitted to compensate for the extra leverage of the portals and larger tyres.

S1 = steering arm on top of swivel housing = studs subjected only to shear forces. S3 = steering on bottom of swivel housing = studs subjected to both shear and tensile forces. I'm afraid I can't show a pic of the broken swivel, because I have cut the swivel seal flange off it, with which to make the thicker oil seal retainer. The more I study the remains of the Stage One casting and compare it with a normal series 3 casting, the more I am becoming convinced that it was the machining to accomadate the wider spaced swivel bearings, and the slack machining tolerance, making the king pin bore 0.020" oversize that has weakened the casting, and due to the low production numbers of Stage Ones,why this kind of failure is rare. It is a truly evil piece of engineering IMO. Ten minutes work with a die grinder, and I have managed to clearance the normal series 3 casting without removing metal from the critical area around the 2 inner stud holes from where the cracks propagated from. This section is now 2mm thicker than on the Stage One casting and I've smoothed out the inner ends of the threaded holes. I think this detail work will likely do the trick and the swivels will likely outlast me. At any rate I likely won't be phaffing about with LandRovers in 12 years time at age 76.

Well they mainly built them thicker in places, but more or less interchangeable with earlier ones. On inspecting an undamaged casting there is a noticeable lack of detail finishing work that can really only be done by hand, to reduce stress concentrators that IMO certainly didn't help to prevent cracks from starting at the exit of the threaded stud holes and out to the sharpish corner of the swivel seal abutment. The little 1/4'' bsf drain plug hole drilled almost through to one of the steering arm stud holes doesn't help either. The Stage Ones, having slightly wider spaced swivel bearings also required metal to be removed from the bottom of the casting to provide clearance for the bearing cone, but counter boring this area has removed far more metal than necessary and left another sharp edge between the threaded stud holes and the swivel pin bore. If I use a normal series 3 casting I think I can sort most of those issues by dressing all the stress concentrators with a die grinder, like I successfully do with CV joints to improve their durability. I will also make a thicker swivel seal retaining plate to make that area more rigid, and re tap the stud holes out to M10 and use 4 dowelled bolts in place of the 7/16" BSF studs. BtW, My earlier posts may have mistakenly given the impression that I regularly "hammer my vehicle over hudreds of miles on corrugated roads at 50-60 mph. That isn't so. I gave that example to Tenuki to illustrate the difference between driving at speed on autobahns verses what 4wds are expected to do on outback Australian roads. My vehicle in the past 12 years has almost exclusively been operated at relatively low speeds in extremely twisty terrain, or used as a substitute tractor around my bush property. In fact I can't recall ever severely bottoming the front suspension on its bump stops. About the only time the bump stop come into play is during articulation. The extra leverage that the portal boxes would apply to the casting has been compensated for with a 2nd botton king pin bearing on an adjustable strut running to the axle housing and various other bolt on bracing to prevent relative movement between the portals and the casting, in addition to fitting the steering arms to the top and having heavily back spaced wheel rims. The reversed steering arms Snagger, actually gives very close to parallel steering on my truck, so I don't see an influence there either.

Nice sentiments, if it were ever true ! But sadly Defender and his predecessors have always stopped short of that lofty height.

Oh, you are having a rant? your thread titled made me think you were inquiring into fellow forumers health.

When I went to India on business way back in 1984 I visited a world class firm named Metropolitan Springs, that aside from producing relatively new technology back then Parabolic springs for Ashok Leyland, Tata and Merc trucks, also produced halfshafts and other transmission shafts of superior quality to the original British product. They offered to make my company 10 spline halfshafts that they would guarantee were stronger and more flexible than the very good (in those days) 24 spline Salisbury halfshafts, but my company declined due to cost. British automotive engineering standards, outside of the racing industry, doesn't enjoy a great reputation internationally, and LandRover, particularly with the Defender type vehicles are one of the worse offenders, so I don't see that the Indians could do a worse job of building Defenders unless they try really really hard to do so.

For anyone that is still interested, the swivel housing that I have cracked is from a Stage One V8, and just now when comparing it to a normal series 3 casting that I was intending to replace it with, the flange surrounding the swivel seal register,is appreciably thicker and a bit larger in diameter,and the stub axle (spindle)mounting area is also thicker, in addition to being a bit tougher to drill when opening up the bolt holes for larger bolts. For LandRover of all company's to make those changes, cynical mean old me thinks there was a likelyhood that feedback from around the world suggested the original castings weren't quite strong enough under some conditions.

Yes you and Tanuki are correct. They last well enough over the relatively short distances in generally soft ground conditions of jolly old Britain, and it is unkind of me to sling off at the engineering competence of LandRover designers who consistently get everything so very right ! There was a question in the title and text of the thread. ( How common are cracked swivels? ). Some of you seemed to have ignored it. So how about you ignore the thread altogether ?

I already fitted the series 3 trackrod arms to the top years ago to deliberately reverse the Ackerman angle. That is probably why the right hand side hasn't failed. Lacking a left hand drive version of the drag link arm, I left the original on the bottom left, but braced it from the redundant rod end socket to the portal box to relieve the 4 studs of the steering shear forces. Recall reading a factory workshop manual on swivel pin studs years ago that stated " failure to fit the 2 special dowell studs to the bottom will result in PREMATURE failure. Note my emphasis on the word 'premature'. My engineering brain reads this as saying that under certain conditions the studs will fail eventually anyway, but fitting non dowell type studs will speed up their demise. Nice bit of engineering design LandRover !