1993 Defender 110 Station Wagon

[Stinkfloyd]

Hi All,

I thought I'd introduce my new project. 

I have recently become the new owner of my uncles Defender. He owned this vehicle for about 15 years and it was this very vehicle that got me obsessed with the green oval! Many hours spent in this vehicle on road trips, off roading days and later in life l, using it as a tool to tow my motors.. 

My uncle never planned to sell it as it was his pride and joy but unfortunately, due to a mixture of unfortunate circumstances, the landy slowly fell into a bit of mechanical disreapare and eventually ended up parked on the drive with a blown gearbox in 2022. 

So, December this year I received a somehwat early christmas present.. a phone call asking me to come collect it off his drive! My uncle decided he didn't want to see it sit land rot on his driveway and as I was its biggest admirer, it was offered to me.

So all other projects and bits swiftly went up for sale (or will be going up for sale shortly) and space was made for the new addition. 

So, the plan is to get it ready for its next 15 (and hopefully many more) years of life and give it a fairly intensive restoration, starting with: new door skins and bonnet, galvanised bulkhead, galvanised chassis, any other body repairs required before treating it to a new lick of paint! 

 

To those who were following my series 2 restored thread, I apologise.. but this motor was one I couldn't let go! 

 

[Stinkfloyd]

So first step was to source a new lt77 gearbox... no bother, off to ashcroft I went. Unfortunately, ashcroft no longer rebuild lt77 gearboxes due to some parts no longer being available from land rover. I could have sent my current box down for a rebuild but if it the certain parts were not in good enough condition, the box would have essentially been scrap to them. So my only option was to buy an R380 however this would be without exchange, costing around £1800. Everyone at ashcrofts was helpful and I can understand them wanting to gaurantee quality but unfortunately this was out of my budget.

So a bit more googling (and searching on the forum) and I found myself on the phone to Beaumonts. Who were willing to do an exchange unit for a freshly rebuilt lt77. Result! Beaumont were a joy to deal with start to finish and gearbox is now sitting in my unit waiting to be fitted! Great price, very helpful and very patient.. I would highly recommend for anyone in a similar situation. I will get photos of the box this weekend hopefully.

Now down to fitting. I will be fitting this box immediately just to get the land rover mobile for the time being (as currently it is only mobile in 4th gear) so I need to decide what geabox oil I am going to order..

Unless it has a note on the gearbox when i open the packaging, I am thinking about using an MTF 75w 90 as opposed to regular ATF and was wondering if anyone else had done this and how they found it? 

Edited April 16 by Stinkfloyd

[landroversforever]

The LT77 was designed for ATF.... whether the recommendation changed later on I'm not sure. I never had any real issues with mine and ATF in either hot or cold temps, just a slightly notchy 1-2 when cold. I'd ask Beaumont's what they'd recommend.

[reb78]

I'd check with Beaumonts but suspect they will say ATF. A decent ATF isnt expensive. In my opinion you are best off using it and upping the service intervals as a change is quick, easy and cheap. Leaving it forever, as people tend to do with transmission oils, does the damage. 

If ever needed, Bristol Transmissions built me a stumpy R380 for under £1000 and happily took an LT77 in exchange. Its been spot on.

[FridgeFreezer]

I'm a big fan of magnetic drain plugs - especially Nige's insanely strong ones - for gearboxes and anything else with a drain plug frankly.

[Snagger]

14 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

I'm a big fan of magnetic drain plugs - especially Nige's insanely strong ones - for gearboxes and anything else with a drain plug frankly.

They save a lot of crud from blocking the filter (incredibly badly sited) and strangling the oil flow.

[Sigi_H]

3 hours ago, reb78 said:

Leaving it forever, as people tend to do with transmission oils, does the damage

I agree absolutely. It is not that important which oil (often even which viscosity) it is, as long as it is changed often enough.

You can even use olive oil, if you change it hourly 🤣

Gearbox I change once in ca 3 years.

In my opinion the magnetic material on drain plugs commes from the synchro rings. They are conical clutches, which synchronise gears with shafts. The ring itsself is non magnetic, but the oposite cone is. This creates magnetic "dust" which can be collected mostly by magnets. It is self explaining, that not all can be collected, but will be completely rinsed with a oil change

 

Edited April 17 by Sigi_H

[pat_pending]

14 hours ago, Stinkfloyd said:

I am thinking about using an MTF 75w 90 as opposed to regular ATF

You will...

void the warranty, have a poor gear change at best and impossible when really cold at worst, risk damaging the fibre oil pump gears and wreck the whole box.

LT77 was designed to run on ATF-Dexron 3.

The drain plug on the side already has a magnet, or should have, change the oil every 12,000 and remove and clean the filter.

The 77 is not a bad box when set up properly, imo most  failures are because the box is shimmed too tightly.

 

[Stinkfloyd]

7 hours ago, landroversforever said:

The LT77 was designed for ATF.... whether the recommendation changed later on I'm not sure. I never had any real issues with mine and ATF in either hot or cold temps, just a slightly notchy 1-2 when cold. I'd ask Beaumont's what they'd recommend.

From what I can gather, I believe that MTF wasn't available when the lt77 was made. Given the r380 is essentially the same box with a few modifications, I was going to go for that. The MTF should help eith the notchyness when cold as there is better lubricity at low temps. 

I'll give beaumonts a bell (though they're probably happy to see the back of me 😂) and see what they say. 

[Stinkfloyd]

3 hours ago, pat_pending said:

You will...

void the warranty, have a poor gear change at best and impossible when really cold at worst, risk damaging the fibre oil pump gears and wreck the whole box.

LT77 was designed to run on ATF-Dexron 3.

The drain plug on the side already has a magnet, or should have, change the oil every 12,000 and remove and clean the filter.

The 77 is not a bad box when set up properly, imo most  failures are because the box is shimmed too tightly.

 

Out of curiosity, what was the main difference between the R380 and the LT77 that meant that the mtf didn't damage the r380 but does damage the lt77? 

[Stinkfloyd]

7 hours ago, reb78 said:

I'd check with Beaumonts but suspect they will say ATF. A decent ATF isnt expensive. In my opinion you are best off using it and upping the service intervals as a change is quick, easy and cheap. Leaving it forever, as people tend to do with transmission oils, does the damage. 

If ever needed, Bristol Transmissions built me a stumpy R380 for under £1000 and happily took an LT77 in exchange. Its been spot on.

Seems like wise words! I'm definitely giving them a call before putting anything in 😁

Worst case, ATF to begin with if that is what is recommended and once warranty is well out, I can look at other options.. 

[pat_pending]

Indeed, the MTF (75/80) that Land Rover specify for the the R380 wasn't available when the first versions of the 77 came out.

In the same way 0w20, 10w40 or 5w30 oils weren't available when engines were spec'd to run on 20w50, and it would be a bad idea use the modern oils in an older engine.

The clearance's and tolerance's of the internals will have been made to use a particular specification of oil, so even if components look similar between the 77 and the 380 it doesn't follow they are made the same.

Deviating from the manufacturers spec's is probably not a good idea, particularly with a newly rebuilt box under warranty.

Ashcroft still spec ATF for the 77, I'm sure if they found an oil that worked better they'd say so.

I stopped working in Land Rover dealers in the 90s (started in 79) so I've limited experience of rebuilding the R380 or their problems, I have however rebuilt probably a few hundred LT77s a lot of them while still under Land Rover warranty.

I've seen some that were running gear oil, no idea of the spec' but clearly not ATF and in all cases the gear change was worse than with ATF.

Some of those boxes were in a bad way when stripped, often with failure of the fibre pump gears (although this can still happen with ATF).

I saw no evidence that anything was an Improvement over ATF.

Edited April 17 by pat_pending

[Stinkfloyd]

Sounds fair, i am likely over engineering things so will probably stick with ATF and change yearly. At the end of the day, there are plenty lt77s with a good few miles on them that have only ever seen ATF! 

[Retroanaconda]

I bought my 90 with 140k on the clock - put another 150k on it before the gearbox developed a noise. Swapped another one in and have done another 120k since then. All on bog standard mineral ATF Dexron 3.

The 110 looks a great project 

[FridgeFreezer]

12 hours ago, Stinkfloyd said:

Sounds fair, i am likely over engineering things so will probably stick with ATF and change yearly. At the end of the day, there are plenty lt77s with a good few miles on them that have only ever seen ATF! 

This feels like conflating using the wrong oil with just using fresh / better quality oil of the correct type...

Most mechanical things will work for a quite a while with the wrong oil but unless you're sending oil samples off for analysis you won't know if you're knocking years off the life of it until, well, years down the line...

[Sigi_H]

In a German LR forum a rallye driver said, he killed several R380 but never a LT77.

No idea why, but even though the R380 is improved, the LT77 seems not bad. The only idea I had is to build additional cooling and filtering via an el. pump sucking from the drain plug, pressing through a oilfilter and back in the filler, controlled by an el. thermal switch. Result is more and cleaner oil, without changing anything in the box.

Edited April 18 by Sigi_H

[Stinkfloyd]

14 hours ago, Retroanaconda said:

I bought my 90 with 140k on the clock - put another 150k on it before the gearbox developed a noise. Swapped another one in and have done another 120k since then. All on bog standard mineral ATF Dexron 3.

The 110 looks a great project 

That sounds good enough to me 😁

 

Thanks for offering your experience!

[Stinkfloyd]

9 minutes ago, Sigi_H said:

In a German LR forum a rallye driver said, he killed several R380 but never a LT77.

No idea why, but even though the R380 is improved, the LT77 seems not bad. The only idea I had is to build additional cooling and filtering via an el. pump sucking from the drain plug, pressing through a oilfilter and back in the filler, controlled by an el. thermal switch. Result is more and cleaner oil, without changing anything in the box.

Interesting when you consider the r380 is supposed to be stronger... I suppose maybe rallying is a very unique situation that most boxes don't see so another area becomes the week point in the modified box? 

[Sigi_H]

I just mentioned what he wrote. The LT77 is not stronger for sure, but depending on the tires or on the ground it can be much better as we believe, which he confirmed

The tyres ultimately determine the transmission load. If you drive carriage wheels, every gearbox has an easy life. It's different with wide tyres, which never spin. Only then does the entire torque of the engine have to be transmitted.

I believe the LT77 is a good and proofen concept. It was constructed in the 30s of last century, when tyres was a lot smaller. Cooling it with my idea is not a really necessary improvement, but a nice project for hot areas, that can´t harm.

 

 

[FridgeFreezer]

1 hour ago, Sigi_H said:

Cooling it with my idea is not a really necessary improvement, but a nice project for hot areas, that can´t harm.

It does add cost, complexity, points of failure, and weight though...

I just stick temperature telltale indicator labels around my vehicles and if anything ever shows it's got too hot I'll consider adding cooling - so far nothing ever has.

[Stinkfloyd]

On a totally different topic to the current disagreement, I picked up some goodies! 

 

3 liters of atf dex 3 and 3 liters of ep 80w90 (could not get ep90 for love nor money.. but t/box isn't under warranty anyway). Hoping to do the box tomorrow. Aiming to do it in a day.. watch this space...

[Stinkfloyd]

Got the box unwrapped and all looks great! 

[Stinkfloyd]

Let's see if we can get it in and running in a day!

[Stellaghost]

23 minutes ago, Stinkfloyd said:

Let's see if we can get it in and running in a day!

You had best or you will not hear the last of it from me.......

.A good mornings work should do, especially with those facilities..

Regards Stephen 

[Sigi_H]

painted shift forks 😁

you need a glass cover for the lever