bill van snorkle

I don't know why, but for some reason I thought Portal Tech were fitting Landey type full floating spindles and hubs to Volvo portal boxes in order to facilitate the disc conversion. Now that I see the new stub shaft I understand how it comes together. Bill.

I agree Jez, that is excellant value. I was just trying to give a fair pro's and cons comparison of the two options. If I had left out the brake comparison it would have looked like unfair bias. Bill.

The Volvo was designed as a portal axle. LandRover axles were not. You would be hard pressed to find any engineer that would sign his name to a modification that imposed as much stress on the swivel balls, attaching bolts, swivel housing and swivel pins and bearings as would a 1 ft (30cm) larger diameter tyre. Bill.

I have nothing against Maxidrive products. They are nicely made and use high quality materials, but the following is a comparison between Volvo and Maxidrive portal options Volvos, complete with factory standard difflocks were available EX Malaysia for around AUS$4500 a set landed. Properly done ,Landrovers can be engineered and registered with Volvo axles fitted. If you start off with standard Rover type axles, fit Maxidrive difflocks, reinforced Banjo housings and Maxidrive Portals you will be out of pocket by around AUS$17000. You will have a vehicles that is not registerable in Australia. The ratio of MD portals is only 1.3:1, so the fragile CV joint is only effectively 30% stronger than before, compared to the Volvo at over 100% stronger(ratio 2.19:1). Volvo swivel housings are designed to cope with the significantly higher loads that portals impose on swivel pins. Rover swivel housings and pins, particularly the smaller ones on coil sprung models are not. The diameter of Volvo final axle shaft is 46 mm. The diameter of MD portal final axle shaft is 31mm. The MD is fully floating though, which offsets the difference to a degree. MD portal conversions retain disc brakes. Volvos have standard drum brakes and a disc conversion costs $$$. The 2 gear Volvo portals would have less rolling resistance than the 4 gear Maxidrive units. The MD portals will bolt straight on , whereas Volvos require a bit of (about $1000) worth of fabrication to fit up. Bill.

On our doorstep doesn't always mean it is cheaper. I heard that an ARB locker in the USA costs less than over here. Anyway properly designed European offroad vehicles do not require the assistance of Messers Andrew and Roger Brown, or Malcom Story. Bill.

European offroad enthusiasts are really spoilt. I wish we in Australia had the opportunities to access the types of vehicles available to you from neighboring countries. A year ago a friend who lives in Dorset bought a complete very low mileage 6x6 Volvo off the docks for 3,500 pounds.Surely that is a better way of sourcing axles?. Although, I would be very reluctant to cannibalise a perfectly good Volvo to build up a LandRover. The term '' gold tooth on a rat'' springs to mind. LOL. :

Not likely. If LandRover remain true to their recent form they'll probably delete the rear crossmember altogether, screw the sheetmetal rollers even closer together and make the rest of the chassis from 1 mm tinfoil. And if they are feeling generous they might actually slap some paint on. Bill.

Try to locate some Volvo c303 axle assemblies. They are considerably lighter than 404 Unimog axles and have the correct offset for LandRovers. Even the standard length Rover propsafts bolt straight up. The brakes, although drum type are compatible with the rest of your Landy brake system. The Unimog 404's have much bigger stronger diffs, CV's and upper axles, but IMO Volvo axle assemblies are at least effectively twice as strong as 3.54 :1 Rover type axle assemblies. Volvo portal gears are very close in size to 404 mog portal gears but Volvos are straight cut so do not generate heat or end thrust like 404's helically cut gears. There is a bit of fabrication work to setup the LandRovers coil suspension mounts, but any axle swap is like that. You have to relocate the panhard rod chassis mount further up and back to clear the Volvo track rod. To keep front propshaft UJ angles the same as standard, and therefore vibration to a minimum, the swivel housing flanges on the banjo housing should be redrilled in order to tilt the diff up some 12 to 15 degrees to emulate the pinion angle of a standard coil sprung Rover front diff. Bill.

What I meant Al was that the combination of 4 spd wide ratio T98 and 27% 2 speed Ranger torque splitter was more versatile in that it gives 8 effective speeds with a lower ratio 1st of 6.55:1 (Ford Thames version). Versatile in that the mainshaft spline is almost identical to series landy. Cheap as chips here in OZ. Can run them on any old oil. Don't blow their stack when synchros get a bit long in the tooth. John , aka Bush65 I know a couple of blokes who are going to be extremely pee'd off when I show them your post listing all the faults with their expensive GM engines. Thanks for sharing. I am glad now that I didn't buy one and instead opted for tried and true, and cheap! Bill.

They may be heavy in comparison to an alloy Rover V8, but they compare favourably with an Isuzu 4 BD1 which was the Australian Deisel option for LWB LandRovers from around 1980 to 1990. There are a few 6.2 and 6.5 Gmc converted Rovers running around over here and they seem to be reliable enough, although 22 mpg seems to be about the best fuel economy one can realistically expect. Rovers LT95 transmission will live behind one, but no other Rover built box will. The NV 4500's are ok , expensive, but far from bulletproof. A mate of mine has a 6.5 with a Hino 6 speed truck box in his 2A LWB. I have a four speed Warner T98 truck gearbox $200 good used)plus 2 speed Ranger torque splitter box (Another $200 used)which is much stronger and more versatile than the NV4500, that I was going to put behind a 6.2 but ,I am planning on moving to Vietnam in a couple of years, so I have decided to bolt it to a 3 litre normally aspirated Toyota Deisel instead. Bill.

There are apprentice auto mechanics, auto electricians, fitters, turner and fitters etc. But I have never heard of apprentice mechanical engineers. Maybe if there was such a thing, we wouldn't have vehicles that are ridiculously difficult to work on. I thought LandRovers were bad enough but my wifes Trooper drives me insane whenever it requires mechanical attention. The engineers designed it to be easy to work on only if the body is removed, otherwise you need a trained mouse that can operate spanners and screw drivers. Bill.

I am going out on a crash and burn offroad trip today and this discussion on the finer points of axle shaft technology has reminded me that my left front inner shaft is still one I knocked up 5 years ago by cutting a salisbury rear shaft in half, doing the same to a Toyota front shaft. pressing both shafts into a 6'' length of hollow bar and pool welding the shafts to the bar through holes in the side. This was only meant to be a temporary measure while I waited for McNamara's to make me a new shaft, and I have been carrying the new one around for 4 1/2 years to replace the welded one when it eventually lets go. That is the beauty of portals I guess. Bill.

As a lad in the 1960's and 70's in Melbourne I used to know of a couple of bus companies that used 80 inch wheelbase LandRovers to tow broken down 8 ton Leyland and AEC buses back to the workshops for repair. I think they must have been the real early 80 inchers with constant 4wd and the freewheel unit in the t/case as I could not imagine the diffs or axles in the later models with selective 4wd lasting too long pulling that weight in low range 4wd on sealed roads. Bill.

I picked up something similar to what you are alluding to in a scrap yard a few years ago. It was an alloy housing that bolted between the gearbox bell housing and the engine on a conventional Nissan 2/3 ton truck to turn the vehicle into a street sweeper for narrow laneways. The housing had a central shaft mounted in a large bearing. on the rear end of the shaft was a flywheel and clutch assembly, onto which was bolted the standard Nissan truck 5 speed gearbox. The engine side of the housing looked very similar to the input shaft, oil pump drive and torque convertor stator shaft that one would see when looking at the front of an auto transmission. I had plans to adapt it to my LandRover, but due to the non availability of a locking torque convertor I gave up on the idea and it went back to the scrapyard. Bill.

Material specs and heat treatment procedures is really something I have very little knowledge of and will happily leave to the specialists. Mal Story from Maxidrive once told me that the best materials in the world are useless unless the heat treatment is done correctly. He makes his shafts from Hituff which requires strictly adhered to procedures to get the best results.Apparently many heat treatment plants rarely follow those procedures if they are doing only one or two shafts so Mal has his done by the ton. I agree that surface finish is important, and that it is very easy to compromise the strength and durability of shafts with nicks and scratches from lathe tools etc. Bill

I am with you on that one Jez. I have read that if you bore a 3/8'' diameter hole in a shaft and polish the bore it will increase the fatigue life, and that the torsional strength is not reduced. That may be true, after all what is the torque capacity of a 3/8'' diameter grade 8 bolt ? about 50 ft lb? Not much on an axle shaft with a torque capacity of between 3500 and 8000 lb ft. I am basing those figures on Maxidrive and Longfields torque test results. Bill.

Couldn't agree more with those comments. The US manufacturers very rarely neck down their axles between the splines, incorrectly thinking IMO that removing metal in this area weakens the shaft. McNamara and Maxidrive machine the area between the splines down to just below the root diameter so that the shaft is more flexible and resistant to shock loading in much the same way that a suspension torsion bar flexes . Mercedes with their Unimog axles take this necking down practice very seriously and reduce the diameter of the short halfshafts more than the longer ones to give equal flexibility. The other thing that US manufacturers tend to do is ''through harden'' their axles instead of case harden or induction harden them. I am not qualified to give an opinion on which method is superior, but Mc Namara shafts, at least the ones I had them custom make for me were induction hardened which apperently leaves a tough but ductile core. Bill.

I am certainly no engineer myself. But I have met quite a few incompetent ones , as well as some brilliant ones in my time, and I know what you mean. but I see no reason why you should be embarrased, so long as you have confidence in your own abilities and continue to hone your skills and expand your knowlege of the craft. Bill

Yes, That one was a publicity stunt that proves absolutely nothing, and I don't take it seriously. But there was a time when LandRover did take the idea seriously enough to build a few military Rovers with similar floatation devices. Don't the engineers Pre think about the issues of practicality, re carriage and storage of the floatation devices when the vehicle is driven on dry land? Bill. Edit, I suppose in serious conflict situations, similar to crossing the Rhine in Germany in WW2, these efforts might in fact have some useful application.

I have heard that the British Army would wrap a LandRover in a canvas tarpaulin to float them across rivers, but can't imagine how this works. If they wrap the truck up on dry land, the wheels won't roll, so how do they get them into the water? If they lay the tarp in the water and roll the LandRover on to the tarp before wrapping it up, how does it float with all that water inside the tarp? Bill.

Of limited practical value. How do you carry the floatation devices when you leave the water and want to drive overland? If you never want to leave the water you would be better off with a proper boat. bill.

These problems were virtually unheard of in the days of oil leaking but oil lubricated series 1,2 and 3 wheel bearings. Bill.

Unless I was stuck out in the jungle or desert I wouldn't even try to recover the stub axle as it would have seen enough heat to seriously compromise its strength, and at any rate the inner bearing race would have spun on the stub axle ,wearing it undersize. When you do finally put it all back together, be sure to remove the inner oil seal from the stub axle, fit a proper oil seal to the hub and let the hub be lubricated by oil from the swivel housing instead of grease as previously. Bill.