Jamie_grieve

I know nothing of the adverts or products they use but would suggest that waxoil isn't worth the tin it's in for long term vehicle protection. I still use it as there's no competition that's easy to get but you have to apply it every time you clean your chassis which is an inconvenience. I've cut up a few chassis I've waxoiled over the years and there's been little indication of its presence inside when you look. I waxoil my Volvo C304 every year and spray grease around too and you wouldn't know there was waxoil ever there to look at it. Mixing oil and diesel makes a nice finish and gives a good creepy protection but makes a proper mess for ages after you do it. I've heard of a product called Dinitrol but never actually seen it. Seems to be like a professional waxoil substitute. If you're looking for long term protection I'd be looking to another product. The cleanliness of all your nooks and crannies is also vital to the success of any rust prevention.

I will do, I'll grab a photo of the valves and whatever's in the manuals I've got. oops, dimensions of the centre bearing fell off the radar. I had it and a universal joint sitting on a filing cabinet for ages in the shed. I'll get on it and report back!!

Are RB44 axles a cheap UK way into full size Dana ownership? I know they have a limited slip in the rear. I'm no expert on them but they must have decent axles to have a 5.5 ton GVW?

Regarding the reliability of CTIS I can comment first hand on various fleets of Kamaz over the last 8 years and have never once had a CTIS failure. I have quite a few friends in the UK and Ireland with Zils, Urals and Gaz and same too, I haven't heard of any failures while driving and not attributable to dismantling something or age related.. The Russian systems all use a manual valve on the wheels which can be opened before the CTIS might be required or to balance the air pressures in the tyres. The control is simply a 3 way valve which either inflates via a gauge, deflates or holds the pressure. I just got a Gaz 66 myself and had to play with the CTIS on the way home as the tyres were too soft and getting hot. I was reluctant to do this before leaving as I was expecting all kinds of dramas after it being unused and sat in a field for years but it all worked perfectly. Every Russian military vehicle over three tons had it such was the importance seen in CTIS to help combat nasty imperialist capitalist forces from the West wanting to steal the huge supplies of communist caviar. I'm not sure how relevant it would be on a dedicated off roader where it would never see a hard road surface? The CTIS on Russian vehicles is a little slow to operate compared to say that 6x6 G wagon with the portals. The tyre valves would need to be those bigger ones like you get on tractors to work quickly at low pressures I'd guess.

^^^^^^ I agree with all of that but an observation might be that while it's relatively straightforward to make a low roll centre at the back, doing so at the front isn't so easily done due to space restrictions and packaging. The roll axis probably wants to be pointing downwards to the front for a thing that's allowed to drive on the road so having a slightly higher roll centre at the back might not be a bad thing. Does the body lean actually mean less stability or less perceived stability? By that I mean even a heavily leaning body isn't pushing the body CoG over more than 2 or 3 inches yet were you to have the identical vehicle with a higher roll centre nearer to the centre of gravity to have less body roll you'd also be effectively narrowing the track under the CoG in an off camber situation to also give an increasingly unstable situation. Is your mates instability off road just because of his higher CoG or are his spring rates etc part of it? To improve your mates vehicle would he be better to increase the height of his roll axis to coincide with the CoG say by having larger free camber and higher spring mounts or shackles on top of the springs?

There seems something wrong there, for one wheel to climb only 150mm (6") that there would be a lateral shift of 100mm? To keep the pedantic in me happy, it's the body that has to move laterally not the contact patch if I understand correctly? The roll axis probably has more to do with it that the individual height of the roll centre of the front axle. Does WildFing understeer in general? If we're talking about climbing out of ruts there''s generally two ruts and no articulation going on at the front (or the rear initially) but the difference between the two vehicles is still apparent? Packaging will come into things a lot too. A high roll centre might allow certain solid axle setups to have more bump travel allowing the stuffing of a wheel up higher into the body before fouling thus reducing the height of the cog compared to a similar vehicle with a lower roll centre where the wheels hit the sides of the arches or spring towers. The vehicle with the higher roll centres would also be shifting it's weight over to the low side thus losing stability. It should be fairly easy for someone to model this and tell us how it all works as I wouldn't pretend for a minute to know where diminishing returns start and stop. The high roll centred vehicle will have an added instability due to the large sideways body movements potentially causing rollovers due to momentum of a sideways shifting body. A really low roll centre would do all the above too, I think for solid axles having the roll centre as close to the axle centreline would seem to make sense unless I'm missing something? I think a lot of stuff about vehicle handling on the net only really applies to race cars and doesn't really relate to those of us at the lower end of the scale trundling around in low range which is where I'm guessing this is really what we're talking about?

I've put way worse than that together with no dramas. If it was your only engine I'd agree with the rest and get the heads skimmed but given you have a 3.9 in the background I'd just horse it together as is with what you have though some of the valve seats need lapped in a bit more. You need a solid line al the way around. No point in polishing a turd and throwing good money away.

I agree, use the composite gasket, the hydraulic tappets won't mind. When you say the cam lobes don't look very worn, do you mean not worn at all and look brand new? If not I'd start there or be looking at fitting the 3.9 sooner rather than later. Use a cordless drill to lap the valves in, the ones you show have plenty of meat on them. Use the drill just like a stick and don't go too fast or let it squeak. Keep plenty of paste in there, oil the guides and you'll be done in no time. Some people might be in horror at this but it's fine. Check your timing, it looks like it's been running a bit hot and pinking. Did you do a compression test?

One observation I have on a vehicle with a significantly high roll centre is that as a wheel rises up a diagonal obstacle like a banking or single large obstruction the body is thrust towards the low side thus actually reducing stability in certain circumstances when you need it most. Forcing the the vehicle structure to one side regardless of how small an amount will require the overcoming of it's inertia but I'm not sure as has been said that 80mm is enough to make such a difference. I quite often reduce off roading events to pushing a wheel barrow. Wild Fing would be like holding the wheelbarrow handles high and having the tyre a bit soft and you could imagine it skipping along the side of the rut with little weight in it. The Range rover might be a heavier wheelbarrow with a harder tyre with the handles lower down and you can see this gripping the side of the rut and climbing out. How is the Ackerman angle and scrub radius on Wild Fing? I recall an unfinished discussion some time ago how some vehicles with lockers in steer and turn fine yet others will only plough forwards. Could the two be related? This is quite a topical discussion for me since I've been looking at an A-frame for the front of my stage one but with running 52" tyres it would require a lot of vertical seperation if using a linked suspension. The A-frame would end up being at least a foot higher than normal to make the links light enough. The sideways thrust on the body and the sheer amount of movement was enough to make me abandon that idea. I had a good think, made a few sketches and doodles then made a model to see exactly what was happening to understand it better. I tried a few ways, I got that Auto desk inventor and 360 but found in the end just scaling it and building it was the best way to get an idea of what was going on.

I'd be going straight to the filter(s) if it was me. Sounds like a classic case of a blocked filter. Lift pump sounds fine as it's drawing fuel through the blocked filter slowly and explains why it's running fine after a while. As said, the cool radiator because the engine's not burning enough fuel to do enough work to heat it up past what it's cooling. Check also that all the pipework is actually fuel pipe and that there is no rubber pipe anywhere in the system. This can degrade and block your filter or suck flat when hot if it's thin. Make sure your fuel doesn't have a bug in it either.

To be fair, the new bumpers are rubbish, in fact Defender bumpers stopped being any good after they stopped galvanising them. I'd say it'll rust whatever you do to it. I saw an '09 plate on a dairy arm with a hole rusted through the bumper recently. If you intend to keep it then stick a galvanised one on it.

I'm surprised at them machining them with that amount of porosity going on. I'd be dubious about the material too. It ought to be a cast steel but if that really is cast iron I agree with everyone else that you'd be in trouble before long.

I'd agree there's precious little in it. We had both on the last Defender fleet I worked with and both seemed to wear just the same. The R380 has a stronger build supposedly and wider gears but there's not much in it to be fair if you put them next to each other. I forget what the 'S' was on the later LT77S boxes. What kills them all is people putting gear oil in them instead of ATF or even hydraulic oil in hot climates. we had very few gearbox problems in Southern Angola which can get quite warm and driving in sand and really bad roads all the time with ten men on board. When we did have problems it was almost always due to water contamination. Ours were all ROW spec and none had coolers on the gearboxes. The later ones had the heavy duty chassis and 300tdi etc but no coolers. Maybe we got short changed!!

Aha, we live and learn. I never knew such a thing existed. Just to confirm the disco 1 transfer case didn't have that extra pipe I said earlier, I thought you were talking about the big hole in the retainer. Can you drill the new gearbox casing using the old retainer as a guide? A hydraulic pump won't have a level plug on it but if there's some kind of extra gearbox attachment in front of it there might be something on that.

I'm not sure I understand, the photo on the left still has the bearing retainer plate on it held by the two countersunk screws, the next picture is missing that. The oil is just splash fed to the PTO coupling and other side of the bearing as I understand it through the hole. Is there something different I'm missing? The PTO's seem to have to sort out their own oil level and get on with it in most cases. The one on the left with the oil hole looks just the same as one we stripped from a Disco 1 LT230.

I'm the same, I replaced the brake shoes on my stage one (which has spent plenty of time bogged and stuck all over the place) when I rebuilt it in 1994. It had one set of shoes in it when I put the Santana axles on it a few years ago. I can't honestly say the brakes are really any better with discs. At least not worth the messing around with the different axles and converting it for the sake of discs. I used a 90 / 110 master cylinder. I should have put 80 series axles on it but that was before I learned KAM wouldn't / couldn't sell me the Santana Difflocks. The pedal's harder for sure and doesn't travel as far but I'd still say my only observation of the conversion is the drums were easier to lock the wheels when winching. The discs probably handle lying around in the wet grass where they live better than drums would have to be fair. Not having to adjust the brakes is nice but if a twin leading shoe setup is pulling to the side then something's wrong somewhere. Wide shoes and drums are for sure more sensitive to wheel bearings being loose than discs are.

Very interesting, keep us posted on progress. A disc conversion using LR parts would be very popular. Have a wee look at this: http://www.terrangbil.net/forum/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F4615-nytt-projekt-ctis%2F Whilst your hubs are on the lathe might be worth doing.

+1 for turbo hose. Touch it when the engine's idling and feel for soft spots or just touching it might make it collapse while you're there. The turbo hoses delaminate and boost air gets behind the delamination and blows the inner membrane of the hose up like a balloon blocking the flow of air to the engine. When the engine dies, boost pressure from the turbo dies and this is why it's all good again at idle until it boosts hard again. I remember the first time I had this problem before forums happened and was well impressed at a new unheard of wayI'd foun for a Land Rover to break down. Can you post a follow up so someone doing a search can know what the problem was and how it was resolved.

Yes with the exception of the parabolics. The longer shocks and a different top front mount are first. You can't put longer shocks on the standard mounts. When they are compressed there just isn't room for a longer shock, this is the main problem. When you put a different top shock mount then the parabolics start snapping and you have to get good ones for this not to happen so all of a sudden bang for buck goes out the window. Parabolics don't generally have as much free camber. Driver side 11 leaf diesel springs gives the most free camber. Remove leafs to get the spring rate you want. I suppose the tramp bar would be next but I've never experienced it unless the tyres are really hard like for road driving so it doesn't affect me off road with 8psi in the tyres.

Pushing the shackle backwards by hitting it directly will result in the spring bending non uniformly with the front part of the spring bending until either the shackle inverts and the spring goes into tension or the spring breaks. By having the flat leaf springs referred to earlier then the spring is able to withstand compressive loads on the end of it better. It's like pushing a bit of bent wire rope and a straight bit. The position of the top shackle bolt is critical. It can be positioned so that the shackle will take some compressive load from the impact directly into the chassis and give maximum swing and travel or it can be the opposite and go into tension almost immediately preserving the spring but reducing wheel travel. Pushing the wheel backwards by an impact will result in the rear part of the spring with the fixed eye bending until either the shackle at the front goes into tension before the spring breaks or the spring breaks and your transfer case takes the hit via the prop shaft. The same happens when winching or braking, the forces being smaller just leads to instability, especially combined with a large free camber in the springs. Herein lies the largest part of the argument. Do you want the instability and lack of axle control whilst braking and hitting things or whilst trying to achieve forward momentum and maintaining traction. Flat leaf springs as suggested earlier get round most of the problems of front shackles whilst maintaining the optimum (for leafs) amount of tractive effort. It takes a fair old knock to do as I describe the broken spring scenario, in most cases the spring simply bounces and takes the hit with no ill effects. I've broken lots of springs in all kinds of vehicles and find it a fascinating subject. You are correct that in the stock scenario the vehicle will either push forwards until the wheel makes contact or the vehicle stops (in 99% of situations, so would the front shackles). It's like pulling a bit of rope instead of pushing it. A hard knock breaks the U bolts. Santana U bolts and spring plates are a good upgrade for Land Rovers.

I hate to disagree but I have to chime in again and disagree with what ought to be a common sense argument but my experience is different. I've never changed a front prop on a leafer due to wear on the splines, on the other hand, every single 70 series Toyota Land Cruiser on my last fleet that was over 100k Km's of which would have been about 80 vehicles had an amazing amount of slop in the front prop sliding splines. To the point we actually had to change quite a number. I put it down to religious use of the free wheeling hubs and the props rattling about. That said, a similar sized and aged fleet of Defenders which have the same front suspension didn't display the same wear. Perhaps the turning shaft received better lubrication. It stands to reason and intuition would certainly dictate that rear shackles should wear a prop spline out faster but maybe the wear is happening over a much larger surface area so is less evident. The constant large movements maybe keeps distributing the grease better. Another factor potentially against rear mounted shackles would be bind on the front prop splines during times of rapid plunge and high torque like accelerating on rough ground. I cant say for sure I've ever experienced it but it must happen to some degree? Keeping on track and relevant to the OP I think we all agree some kind of anti tramp bar is a good idea for any long travel leaf spring arrangement with potentially low spring rates regardless of shackle position? Offsetting it as Bill has suggested in other threads seems like a good idea even on a leaf arrangement. Easier to configure in a rear shackle arrangement. We agree the original dampers and the original mounts are the reason for the short travel available at the front of a standard Landy leafer? I disagree about the flat springs and would instead suggest that soft springs with lots of free camber that sit flat at static ride height on level ground will produce more useable wheel travel regardless of shackle position. I'd also argue that well lubricated multi leaf springs are capable of more travel than parabolic springs due to thinner leaves of the same metal with the same yield point being closer to the neutral axis of each leaf and thus able to bend more before failure. The thicker section of the parabolic certainly does not like to get bent backwards like a multi leaf can.

The problem with just driving it back if I understand correctly is that as a UK subject I'd be driving on the Queens highway without me having paid my dues to do so. The fact it's on Irish plates and whatever taxes have been paid to drive the length and breadth of Europe whilst on those plates seems irrelevant to the DVLA who say if yer a Brit you pay tax end of. These plates really do look like a viable alternative. I have some friends who drove back from Kabul to Cork in a VW beetle with Afghan plates last year who had less bother than this. I think they avoided the UK as it's just a bureaucratic hell hole.

Interesting, I've been having no joy with the DVLA on exactly the same thing. I'm looking at bringing a Gaz 66 back to the UK after it's been in Ireland for a few years. It's on Irish plates and currently road legal. It was registered in the UK prior to going to Ireland and a copy of the old V5 still exists. There must be a motor trade between the North and South of Ireland so how is it done there? It seems ridiculous that a vehicle taxed, tested and insured cannot be driven on Uk roads by the new owner yet the same vehicle can be driven by anyone else on UK roads with the owners consent. Transporting vehicles by trailer such long distances by trailer is just silly. Not so bad with a car but what about heavy goods vehicles? There will be a procedure somewhere but those plates look like a great alternative the the DVLA which doesn't work anymore.

I should also add the difference between parabolic and multileaf where the parabolic behaves as a single fat spring but a multileaf as discussed would have the full spring rate for the front part whether shackle front or eye front and a lower spring rate on the rear part corresponding to three or four leaves depending on construction. This might give a very slight amount of dive/squat but we'd at this point be talking about 20kg or so in the above example so not enough in my opinion to make a difference.

I don't mean climbing a hill where the heavier front and different weight distribution come into play where, yes they do climb well backwards, I'd agree, probably better even but I mean in a flat field with the vehicle completely level try and drive up an 18" step with both wheels touching it. The only difference being the position of the shackles. I'll go with the jacking / squatting effect described too, a resolution of the moments (torques) present would confirm this. Say we want to look at typical forces of a two ton 4x4 driving up a steep hill. Lets take a half ton or thereabouts force required to drive our two ton vehicle up a slope. You'd need to be in low range to develop half a ton of pull in a series, probably low second which if I'm aiming for optimum hop would be about right. Too steep and not enough weight, to flat and no hop. Lets also go with Bill just now and say the torque on both axles is even, the front with the engine, winch, bullbar and lets throw on a high lift is heavier than the rear so we don't need to work out the exact slope and the relative weights of each axle. Then each axle, both front and back is contributing a force of 250Kg at the tyre including any slippage. Lets also say the effective radius of our tyres is 15" since we let some air out our 33" tall tyres as the series UJ's don't want anything bigger. The torque the axle is applying to the leaf spring / radius arm is the tractive effort or rim pull x the effective radius of the wheel. T= (250Kg x 9.81 (Force is in Newtons not Kg, 9.81 is gravitational constant)) x (15 x 0.0254 to make it metric like the force) T= 2452.5N x 0.381m T=934 Nm or 689 Lb ft of reaction torque on each axle housing The front spring eyes on the chassis to the centre line of the front axle on a series is 0.88m if we say the front springs are symmetrical and under optimum hop conditions the front axle is in the middle of it's travel so the spring is nice and bent and lines up with the middle of the bumpstop. Using our torque relation above we can say that if torque is force times distance (8Lbs ft =2lbs x 4ft) then we can also say that the force is the same as torque divided by distance (2lbs=8lbs ft / 4ft) Our Landy climbing the hill of a steepness that requires 934Nm on the front axle then the reaction of the spring on the chassis is 934Nm / 0.44m = 216Kg So 216Kg is trying to lift either the front bumper and / or 'pull down' the bulkhead outriggers depending on the suspension design. If you're with me so far then you'll realise the significance of the above statement. It's essentially put numbers to what people call anti dive or ant squat depending on whether drive or brakes is involved. Instead of climbing a hill, exactly the same process is involved in calculating the numbers from braking force as well. If we were discussing radius arms or link suspension you wouldn't be hearing any arguments from me about all this. A solid bar like a radius arm on a coiler can indeed 'suck down' the front with a force in this case of 108Kg on each bulkhead outrigger (ignoring different lengths of arms and springs for the moment). With a solid arm and spring rates like the coilers have then the front suspension will be pushed up or compressed by almost an inch or the wheel is actually being lifted by the grip it has on the ground. The more grip, the more the suspension compresses, less grip, the more it unloads. The inch or two the suspension is moving is not changing the relative position of the centre of gravity of the vehicle by any meaningful amount with springs as stiff as standard ones. On buggys and things with 100lb in springs then yes but on a standard vehicle with stiffnesses almost tripple this then nah. A stage one has a spring rate of 314kg cm (273lb in) The spring would hardly move at all were it to be radius arms instead. In the case of a leaf spring where both ends are connected to the chassis I dispute that there is any reaction present at all to give jacking or squatting behaviour. Whilst one end is pushing up, the other is pulling down with exactly half the same force as would be applied in a link suspension. Asymmetric leaf springs exist for this very reason. The Land rover with it's symmetrical front springs and vertical shackle position will produce a jacking effect at the front and a squatting effect at the rear of the spring which will balance out exactly the same as an independently sprung vehicle with wishbones. If you imagine the spring to be just a really wide wishbone then you'll see what I mean. A leaf spring with an unrestrained slipper like what trucks often use but without the restraint instead of a shackle would exhibit the behaviour of a link to some degree but isn't really relevant to the discussion. PS, I'm not disputing that a hopping / tramping behaviour exists, just that I don't believe it's anything to do with the shackle position but rather a combination of the spring twisting, the damper position behind the axle and the tyre sidewall combining to make the hop, maybe a bit of shaft out of phase with the axle twisting back so a cyclic torque getting fed in, slipping gripping wheel, sticking slipping prop splines and so on. All axles must display some degree of tramp unless rigidly mounted.