ashtrans

thats what I thought it did but I may be wrong,

I took delivery of a brand spankers 90 XS with metallic paint, tow bar, mats and road tax today for £ 24250, don't think you will get cheaper from a UK dealer,

My father, Ian Ashcroft made some of these many years ago for a couple of the comp safari racers of the day, from what I remember they were : a rover diff and stock beam axle, chop each side of the axle casing a couple of inches from the diff side gears, bore a hole in a rectangular 6mm steel plate, fit a round collar in the plate hole, press a top hat bronze bush in the collar and oil seal weld plate to each side of axle housing make 2 splined (bored 12mm) stubs, like a mini halfshaft 6" long make 2 drive flanges use a long bit of studding from flange to flange to hold it together, you can use the ends of the rectangular side plates and the steering damper mounts holes (in the diff housing) to mount the diff,

Yes it was, (but still a bargin ! )

the answer depends on the VIN number of the vehicle, the rear drive flanges will be what I call either 'Thin' or 'Thick' : if thin they are already 24 spline so I guess they look like the Thick option, if so you cannot fit the Thin flange 24 spline type as they will not fit over the hub nuts, the only way I can think of doing it is to fit our HD old type rear halfshafts and our 5806M drive flanges, hope this helps, Dave Ashcroft

Hi, if you are removing the LT95 the best 5 speed box to replace it with is the V8, long stick, the short stick will not fit the tunnel very well and it will need to be chopped a bit to fit but they are more readily available, you have a few options here depending on what you want to spend : the cheapest will be to get a early V8 long stick LT77 from about a 1985 RR classic, this is the type 52A suffix D LT77, next is to find a later suffix G or H LT77 type 60 or 61A which is the same as the 52A but stronger strongest is to fit a R 380 suffix L, again a V8 long stick version, or if you don't fancy a LT77 or R 380 you can always fit a Santana LT85, strong but clunky, whichever option you go for you will also need : the V8 bellhousing to go with the above box the LT230 transfer case mounts linkages clutch hope this helps, feel free to give me a call if you need any further info, Dave Ashcroft

I had a customer a few years ago that bought a auto conversion kit for a 300 TDi defender, he put it in and phoned me up efffing and blinding that it only had 2 gears, only did 30 mph and I had ruined his landrover, I got in my car and drove 3 hours to him and immeadiatly test drove the vehicle, upon my return I said it seems to drive OK, you did know it was in low range didn't you ? didn't even get a sorry or a thank you, Dave

Hi all, since we changed the design and the material of our shafts in Oct 05 we have sold over 1300 shafts, 650 pairs for all types of landrovers doing all types of off roading to every country you can think of. No bull, we have not had one single shaft fail, not one. I think this stat alone speaks volumes and this is why we give them a 5 year warranty. As some of you know we have conducted our own tests, you can click here for info and a video of some testing : http://www.ashcroft-transmissions.co.uk/category_9.html we have tested stock LR shafts and our competitors shafts but I don't feel it's right to publish this info, lets just say they don't give a 5 year warranty for a reason, We have not tested Maxidrive shafts but I think they are also very good and would guess they would be on a par with ours but are overpriced in Europe. Dave

FB, theres no time for idle chat, get back in the garage and get that buggy finished ! Dave

Hi, I would agree with Ian above, very likley to be the int pin O ring leaking, possible but not easy to change in situ, Dave

tip of the day, as soon as you open the box of a new grinder (we get through loads of them) take a tie wrap and fasten the chuck spanner 2 foot down the cable, never loose it again, Dave

parts required to convert a suffix J R 380 to the 50A spec are : FTC 4018 1 Bellhousing, FTC 4616 1 M12 x 40 CSK bolt FTC 5372 1 nose cone FTC 5056 1 pinion if you have a type 53 or 56A you will also need to change the lay shaft and 1st gear, the main problem is the bellhousing, usually on factory backorder, Dave

you can remove the BW and fit the 230 no problem, you will need to use the disco hi/lo and diff lock linkages and mount the lever to a FRC8558, swan neck mounting bracket, Dave

the box he has is the LT77 V8 longstick type 52A suffix D, and LT230 from an 1984/85 RR classic, Dave

the lever goes into a small casting held on with 6 bolts, remove them and check the grub screw is tight inside, you will see which one when you get it off, also, remove the 13mm nut and remove the rod from the clevis pin, just select with an adjustable to eliminate any linkage mis adjustment, sitting in bristol airport at 5AM killing time, off to south spain the thrash dirt bikes across the mountains, will check back on wed on my return to see how you got on, Dave

Hi, the LT230 suffix A and B have the thin (27mm wide) 26 tooth input gear, suffix C onwards use a wider (32mm) gear, unfortunatly the difference is not just the gear width but also the tooth pressure angle, ie you can't fit the wider cross drilled gear. One thing you can do is to fit an oil feed plate to stop the spline wearing. the longer length of the gear indicates it comes from a suffix G LT230 either a late 300 or a TD5 defender, the 1.003 you have is the LT230 R ( R = Roller bearing on intermeadiate pin), suffix A, from suffix B onwards it was called the LT230 T , T means Taper roller bearings on the intermeadiate pin, Dave

had a customer phone last week with a similar problem, came back today and it was the AFM giving duff values but not sending up an error, Dave

funnily enough we have been looking into this last week after also having had this problem, we go to 45 ft/lb a med strength loctite on brake cleaneered threads but this is still not good enough for some applications, KAM use a 3/8 BSF thread like the older 4.7 series diffs, this is quite a corse pitch not as good as the later 3/8 UNF, all 3.54's and our 4.11's use the 3/8 UNF , you can buy higher tensile 12.9, 3/8 UNF bolts but they are all socket caps and thus do not have a shank which is very important to locate the crown wheel, the later P38 diffs use the same thread in 12.9's, hex head with integral washer but have no shank, not ideal. (and they are £ 2 each), we are doing 3 things : 1) costing up a batch of 2000, 3/8 UNF, 12.9 tensile, 1 1/8", hex head with 3/8" shank and integral washer, 2) being higher tensile we can fit to a higher torque, waiting to speak to a guy tomorrow who has these figures, 3) buying high strength permanent fixing loctite. should do it, Dave

Hi, they will swap over but you will have to fit the disco I top shifter assy, dave

thethread is just there for assembly purposes when building the box, no nut should be fitted,

hi Will, if this reverse plunger sticks as they sometimes do it stops you going across to the left to the reverse gate and the gearstick stops at the 1/2 gate, i don't think this is the problem Peter is having as he mentioned it went into reverse then kicks out,

when you select reverse in an LT77 you are engaging 3 gears, the 1/2 syncro outer on the mainshaft, the reverse idler gear (to reverse the direction) and the layshaft, 1, 2 or all 3 are worn sometimes totally mashed from abuse, sometimes the gear face is worn at an angle so it slides out under load, sounds like you have the latter problem, it's box out I'm afraid, we often do repairs like this and whilst I cannot be exact until we know what parts we are changing they usually cost between £ 125 and £ 200, + VAT, hope this helps, Dave Ashcroft www.ashcroft-transmissions.co.uk

well said 'Wall Street', some very good points which I don't think everyone appreciates,

Hi, the 07 Defender will have a derivitive of the MT-82 6 speed gearbox similar to that used in the latest 6 speed transits, I have just had a transit box delivered but cannot get reverse easily, could a transit driver please advise where reverse is on the shift pattern please,

Hi, I am putting a lot of effort into our web site at the moment and one thing I have learnt to do is add short digital videos. I have done a write up in the halfshaft section about the shafts and the test rig we used to test them, it would be great to be able to put a bullet cam or small digi camcorder in the test rig up close to a shaft / CV joint and record it failing and upload to the web site showing the failure in slow motion. The digi camera and digi camcorder I have seem to record at 25 FPS, way too slow I guess, any idea what speed I would need to capture a shaft/CV failure and what type of camcorder I need to buy / rent / borrow to record the footage ? many thanks, sorry to post it on here but I am struggling to get advice on this,