Spearos

Welcome! Nice truck! I had a Trooper with the 2.8 engine a few years back - great engine! IIRC it takes quite a lot of oil, about 6/7 litres. Lots of info here: http://www.itocuk.co.uk/ HTH

Thanks. Done a bit of reading, and all is clear - the seal gives variable damping, altering the effort needed to turn. I guess if the seal gave a reliable/constant damping you could just increase the recommended effort needed. As for reading the scales wrong, I've been an even bigger numpty! I remember taking the reading off the right hand side of the scales, which when you look at them the right way up is LBs. But.... of course with the hook in the TRE hole the scales were upside down and KGs were on the right hand side! So, is it worth dropping the Swivel oil and removing seal to re-check the preload? I'm thinking now, perhaps I'll just disconnect the steering and see how the swivel feels when turned by hand.

Pretty sure it's not the wheel bearings - while rocking the wheel I can see the movement between the ball and the bottom of the swivel housing (quite difficult to rock the wheel whilst craning your head around the front of it!!). After I wrote this post, I had a terrible thought.... Looking at my scales I'm thinking I *might* of been looking at LBs instead of KGs So, that'll be the first thing I check! One question I have though is why are you supposed to set the preload without the seal and stub axle fitted? Whatever the reason, should it be taken into account when checking the preload at a later date? I knew it all went too well....

Last week I re-built both Swivels on my 90 with new top pins/Railko bushes and bottom pins/bearings. It was the first time I've done this job, however it all went well and I've done about 180 miles since the rebuild. All 'feels' good. Today I took the opportunity to inspect each hub/swivel and check all is well. I've noticed on the O/S there is a small amount of play when I rock the wheel with my hands in the 12 and 6 o' clock position it appears to be coming from the bottom pin/bottom of the ball. Any ideas? One thing to note is that the top pins required a lot of shims to get the desired preload. All parts were Allmakes premium range, so Timken bearings. Corteco seals etc.

Very true, however Reb never mentioned A frame ball joints I've not had the pleasure of removing my A frame ball joint yet... But if (should that be when?) I do, I'm sure I could persuade it to part company with my selection of lump hammers!

I asked a similar question in a thread a while ago (at least I think it was on here) and I believe the general consensus with a press is the mor the better, with several reports of needing over 20t to remove bushes. However my line of thinking is that the removal of a bush is where the extreme force is needed, and there would have to be something wrong to require a lot of force to install a new bush. So perhaps is smaller capacity press would be suitable, along with using a more 'red neck' way of actually removing bushes?

Thanks Ross. Well, they're going back in like that then! In fact, one of them is already back where it belongs! I Got the parts this afternoon to rebuild the swivels and managed to get one side done. Seems there is a lot of confusion over the torque of the swivel pin bolts? What figures do people generally use? I did the bottoms 25NM and the top (railko) 50NM, as per this piece of advice found on another forum: "The Land Rover workshop manual gives 78Nm for both the top and bottom swivel pin bolts, now both these seem excessive, particularly for the lower bolt which is 8mm. The bottom bolt is grade 8.8, so I'd guess around 25Nm would be better. The top bolt (10mm) is rusty so I cannot see the grade, if it were 8.8 I'd go for 50Nm." Makes sense to me and at 50NM the top pin bolts felt 'right'...

Cheers Rusty, I'll go with that

Thanks Zardos - if no one else can offer any advice on here I might well give them a call. One other thing, upon closer inspection there appears to be some wear on the spines at the diff end of the shafts. Is this something I should be concerned about?

Good Morning Chaps! I'm currently rebuilding both swivels on my 90 and this morning I'm continuing with cleaning/inspecting everything and I have found some play in the CV/half shaft. The play is when I grip either end and try to rotate in different directions. The movement is between the two parts arrowed, and is ever so slight. The balls & tracks look fine from what I can see. I'm hoping to pick up all the parts I need this afternoon and then crack on with the rebuild, so would really appreciate some feedback. Cheers, Mark

They are indeed a bit pricey, when I bought my 90 the rear wiper wasn't working and I ended up getting one off a well known auction site. They didn't come up often on this site and when they did they always fetched a decent price. Since I replaced mine, I'm sure I have read somewhere that you can fit a Disco / early Range Rover / Metro item (can't remember which) without much hassle - these generally come up more often and are normally cheaper. Perhaps something you could pursue? HTH

I do believe that the steering on a defender is often considered some what vague at the best of times - you certainly can't compare it with a modern hatchback/saloon. What condition are your bushes in? Worn bushes will have a considerable effect on the feel of your steering and/or any wandering, panhard rod bushes particularly. When I replaced the A frame bushes on mine it made a huge difference. I'm sure someone with a lot more knowledge will be along shortly to expand or correct me!!

For me, the cost of fuel is by far the biggest downside of Defender ownership. I always tell myself it's not too bad as it's offset by carrying out the servicing out myself, the price of parts is relatively low and of course depreciation isn't much of an issue. I must confess though, I sometimes daydream about fitting a small(er) capacity, more efficient engine, something a bit different to reduce the amount of time I spend at the pumps. Surely the actual capacity of an engine with regard to the size/weight of the vehicle it's fitted to is irrelevant? Isn't it the power/torque figures that matter? For example the VW AFN engine's figures in the spreadsheet above aren't too far off the 300Tdi figures so why would this be considered underpowered - would the 4bhp/22ftlb really make all the difference? Or is there another factor that comes into play?

Not really a request for a part number but just thought my other post might get a few answers in here. http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=78989 Apologies if 'linking' to other posts to get a response is frowned upon

You can find calculators somewhere on the web which will work out the overall wheel (rim and tyre) diameter of different tyre sizes. May be of use to you, as once you know the overall wheel diameter of your current tyres, you could compare it against the overall diameters different tyre sizes would give you and therefore find something with a similar overall diameter.

Great idea... Although I've never had a problem using a builders bucket, most have spouts for easy pooring and they're big enough that you should never get enough oil in them for it to 'splash out' when moving it. Another bonus is that they are tall and fit nicely between the floor and the sump so when any wind catches that last, weak trickle of oil, it doesn't go all over your drive!

I do beleive they are the same size as Quagmire - 235/85...

Well hopefully we can both learn something from this thread and both achieve leak-free axles! Most of what I have gathered is from this thread, may be of interest to you (if you haven't already seen it)? There's a bit of a debate about the different seals.... http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=7903 HTH

Ok, a small job I need to do on the 'bus' is the pinion oil seals - both are weeping. Vehicle is a '88 factory V8 90, with what I beleive are original axles, Vin EA....... I have removed the rear pinion flange and it is lightly scored so it appears I need to replace this as well as the seal. Without removing the front pinion flange I think it's fair to assume this may well be scored also. So I plan to buy both flanges along with the seals. Always good to be prepared! General consensus I understand is to go with the FRC4586 seals, and of course to go genuine? However I'm a little unsure what flanges I need to order. The flange I removed (rear) was a four spline affair, part number 236632 I believe? From the parts book it seems there is a possibility of two flanges for the rear axle - a 4 spline one and one with a lot more splines. Now the front axle, again from the parts book it appears only one flange was fitted - FRC3002 (the multi spined one). So, am I correct in thinking that all front axles require the FRC3002 flange and the rear axles could require either 236632 or FRC3002? Or is there a chance the front pinion flange could be of the 4 spline variety? Any clarification as to a) what was fitted to what and b)what I should be looking to order would be great. Ta.

Another vote for Grabber TRs and I do a 85 mile V8 powered commute For a road biased Landie I find they perform really well, and I'm astonished at how slowly they wear. They weren't too bad in the snow either...

I'm sure I read somewhere that those plates are to create a tubulent airflow, which helps the petrol mix.... I'm sure someone will confirm this... or shoot me down! As for the vacuum hoses, I have no idea! The Dirty Bus' V8 has SUs and has just the one hose. Perhaps an option is to tee both vacuum hoses into one hose and connect that to the SU?

Thanks for the suggestions/comments guys, I'll be contacting a few more firms soon.

Glad I'm not alone in thinking the quotes are high. £150 for blasting and zinc spraying a whole chassis - If only my folks still lived in Coleford! As for Didcot being posh, you've obviously never been here!

As per the title, I'm looking at getting my 'spare' bulkhead shot blasted. When I did my doorframes I used those nasty angle grinder wire wheels which was a bit time consuming. So looking at doing the bulkhead the 'quick way'. So today I've started to go about finding a local company to do this, and I am shocked at the prices! 2 quotes, one came in at £150 the other £280! Now, am I being naive in thinking these prices are a bit ott? Any recommendations/suggestions?

I've used these two companies - both spot on! Also a little thing I do is I keep the little silica gel sachets you get with new shoes etc, bung them in with the wire spool to absorb any moisture and help prevent it going rusty...