Urgent Help please

[will4x4]

Thanks again for all the replies...i put the wheels on the exact way they came off his...and even tried my fronts on the back etc...

after my pan hard bush went i had to drive home with the 33's on the front and 35;s on the back and felt OK...(the 35's were the ones with balancing beads and usually on the front)

i bought the tyres off a bloke on here so im going to chat to him as i remember him saying he did have some probs at first....im sure he said he got over it with caster correction.

ill go out when i never have a free day / evening and change this panhard and see if there is any other movement.

i would be interested to know if anyone else runs creepy crawlers 35.12.50.16 on 16x10 rims the more i read the more i seem to see people with probs.

[Retroanaconda]

Why don't you have them re-balanced by a capable tyre place?

[nick w]

i know you have mentioned your wheels being ok but when you tried them on the other truck were they in the same place cos i had the same prob rendered my vehicle useless but found the wheels were buckled which with the calmination of other little problems due to normal wear it became a big one check the steering box is really tight and all brackets/supports are also tight if any of the wheels required lots of weights to balance them put them on the rear and the best ones on the front thankfully solved my prob which almost ended in me selling it cos i thought there was no hope

[lansalot]

I feel your pain. I suffered with this for months, and it's almost put me off completely!

My symptoms were, under coasting/idling at around 30-40mph, the steering would be banging/wobbling so hard that I thought I was going to go off the road. A friend in the passenger seat could see the axle poking out the side. To cure it as it happened, I had to just steer slightly to one side, basically lurch the vehicle, and that would stop it for a moment. Not ideal of course! It only ever happened in a straight line, and was more likely to happen if heading downhill or coasting. Sound familiar ?

Eventually cured* once I had all these pieces in place

• panhard rod bushes replaced with polybush
  
• steering box free play tightened
  
• EXACT bolts used (1/2" I think?) for panhard road. Eye on chassis was 13mm, it required boring out to fit the bolts. There is now zero play anywhere on panhard road, not even a millimeter
  
• swapped wheels front and rear
  

From what you're saying about 33s etc, my next thing to try was castor-correction arms. I've a 2" lift and from the look of it, the arms are standard. People say you just lose the self-centring on the steering with a lift, but as the angle increases I reckon you run nearer the risk of the shopping-trolley effect. I'd have thought having 33s on the front and 35s on the rear would have made that worse tho, not better. I'd have expected it to be better if the front was nose-up in other words...

When the bush was at its worst, this is what it looked like:

Also, have you tried just standard wheels/tyres?

* I say cured, I wouldn't be surprised if it returns in time

[martifers]

I used to get terrible death wobble when I first got the truck. It ran 35*12.5*16 Hankooks RT003's. Replacing panhard rod bushes, removing the lift spacers (that the previous owner had put on for some reason) lowering it from 4 to 3'' which brought it more in-line with the 3° castor corrected arms and having the wheels rebalanced sorted it. Not had a problem since.

[The-Mad-Engineer]

Hi all,

Right have read this thread and many others in my mission to sort a 'death wobble'. Firstly it started as a minor wobble arround 50mph however this got steadily worse with time. I spent a while researching the subject and this lead me to the wheel bearings and pre load.

Firstly a bit of background to my knowledge (alot of which has come from my pain thus far)

When purchased in December: -

1984 Red 90, 4 year old chassie (approx) along with polly bushes all round and HD springs (abount and 1" lift at most) Koni front dampers, Monroe rear dampers, rear cross member needs a small patch (but have welder not a problem). It has a disco 1 200Tdi and gbox LT77 (I guessing a bit at the gbox and x fer, but as it has a 200Tdi a 5 speed LT77 in it I'm guessing it had a Disco 1 doner and the engine gbox and xfer were swapped out.

The above is what i knew when i bought it as it had discs on the front and drums on the rear. It also had free style alloys all round which i thought a bit strange but assumed hub plates or spacers had been used. The only other thing was the front axel seems to be about 1.5" offset to the passenger or near side compared to the body and rear axel but i assumed this was due to the new chassie and body work not lining up correctly.

Now the pain: -

I use my Red Tractor every day to go to work and have fun on the lanes and go to the occasional pay and play days (i prefer exploring ) my only other mode of transport was a CBR 918 RR Fireblade which i got arse ended on yesterday .

Any way back to the point - due to the need of the veichle and limited facilities (no workshop or loss of her for more than a few days) so i had lined up a mates car while he was on a course booked her in for wheel bearings seals gaskets and king pin rebuild - but this turned into a mare where the swivels were pitted so new swivels which i hunted for and found the ralko bush typ 2 off got and He (the workshop guy) said they wouldnt fit - don't think he had tried them- any way i digress

I spent a weekend and with the help of Rob @ RJ Landrovers working out what seems to have happened many thnks to him but it turns out there are basically 3 typs of swivel housings - FTC5105 ralko bush typ or ABS typ. FRC7065 timken or needle roller bearing typ and a FRC7065K for a timken needle roller bearing typ for ABS.

I also understand that the swivel housings are able to be swpped between veichles ie you can up grade a ralko bush typ to a timken needle roller bearing type with a king pin change and that is all is this correct as 'my man doing the work' says no??

anyway it turns out it has disco 1 front breaks 4 pot clipers with pins (not split pins) and 10 spline shafts ( axel number 22L06900B) and what appear to be disco rear axel 10 spline shafts with series 3 drums fitted (i'm guessing half shafts and on).

So I have eventually spent a week without the tractor and had all this go on it is now back on the road . . . .BUT

the breaks are really spongey (still need bleding will do at weekend let them bed in a bit)

there is a slight clunk when depressing the clutch now -

And at 47 - 56 / 57 MPH death wobble yet again.

I plan to remove the steering dampre have a test drive and swap out all the wheels and tyers to another set i have lying around but it has BFG AT's on 265/70/16's on free styles that took an age to ballance the worst of which needed 500g in one spot - this is on the wheel carrier but the best 2 (65g and 45g on the front)

There is no play in the steering. but after reading this thread i have decided to look at this in detail at the wekend to see what the play is in the steering and the damper pan hard bushes etc but i'm happy to replace the steering components but i have been stung for a lot by 'the man' £750 plus nearly £200 in parts i have had to collect and source,, so not going to be able to do this for a while yet i have to give up my beloved tractor to a mate for his auto Paj 3L V6 nice but thursty on a run to work but appreciated at the mo after having my left leg crushed (badly bruised) in a motorbike off but still it's my baby and i want to drive her but cant above 47 ish and thats just no good!

I had a 300Tdi all 'straight' and this drove lovely but heavy on the juice but i killed her on some mud driving home from work down a ditch into a bridge.

It had a knackered steering damper but never had this happen before i replaced it.

So i am at a loss

I have replaced and had 'professionally' (supposedly) set up wheel bearings swivel housings new to and bottom pins seals and gaskets, breaks over hauled and discs skimmed drums skimmed and rear half shaft rebuild bearings and seals (series III seals and drums apparently ?).

Where do i go from here a point in the right direction would be appreciated (and from now on i plan to do the work myself !)

Thanks all and sorry for the long thread.

TME

[The-Mad-Engineer]

Hi All,

Some Further updates ----

I checked out my steering and Damper - Damper is on it's way out but not serious enough (in my experiance) to cause the dredded death wobble so back to the drawing board.

I then went down to 35 MPH to work before I could feel the onset of the wobble.

I then decided to take the wheels off (@ work!) and found the fronts didn't fit - Depending on how i tightened them up i could get a £1 coin between the Hub face and the back of the alloy approx 6mm. (Or more on one side and less on the other if not squarely tightened!

Now some background, I knew that early Def couldn't have alloy's fitted with out the expensive spacers was not sure exactly why but . . . I have an early Def with Free Style 5 spokes, but assumed (assumption is the Mother of all F*$k ups) as I had been told by 'the man' that it had early Disco axel, But (not 100%) didn't early discos also have alloys?) but with this in mind i didn't think this would be an issue 'the man' never said anything when he re-fitted them!

So The alloys were fouling on the hub it's self and on the bolt heads on the end of the drive member. I'm also doing up an early Disco 300tdi and thought i'll try them they fitted even worse so I had to get some spacers!

The basic difference (on the outside) between 10 spline half shafts and 24 spline halfshafts is that the hub is longer - I guess this is to get more torque through less splies (some off road 'experts' prefeer 10 spline for this fact as they believe they are stronger - I would have thought a greater surface area would mean less stress on each part of the spline??)

Anyway I need to work out how to upload pics and then you can see from these pics how much deeper a 10 spline early DRover hub is.

So Back to the spacers I'm a Project Engineer and decided i was not going to pay the 100's of squid for these and measured up the HUB and got these dimensions

O/D 200mm

I/D 115mm

5 Holes Dia 17mm on a 165mm PCD

This equates to

O/D 5"

I/D 3"

and PCD 4"

17mm holes for clearence on an M16 stud.

I got these water jetted out of Ally 10mm thick to ensure wheels were square on and I still had thread on the stud to get the wheel on!!!!!

Fittment Day (a lunch time at the place that made them for me) I started out and could only get up to 40MPH before I had to stop for traffic so the run home form work was the answer . . . . .

They worked a treat - NO WHEEL WOBBLE up to her max of 75!!!!

:) :) :) :)

And the wheel nuts stay tight now, am getting a second pair to fit to the rears so I have equal track front and rear.

Moral of the story - - Make sure everything fits as it should !!!!

[landroversforever]

The reason the older wide hubs are liked, is not because of the 'stronger 10 spline' you mention, but the wheel bearings being further apart are happier than later narrow ones with big tyres/big offset wheels.

[landroversforever]

Will, what wheels are you using?

[The-Mad-Engineer]

Argh I see - - that makes sense . . . you learn something every day

[KKMobile]

a friend was running the same tyres that you are running & got me to fit them, he told me not to balance them!! Big mistake. I had to go back the following day a balance them which sorted the problem!! One of the front tyres must have been a bad mould coz it was all over the place, took 950 grams to balance so we put as a spare.

Another friend running 35" simex put balance beads in as per the instructions & couldn't hold it on the road @ 60mph! Broke the back beads of tyres & sucked all the beads out (as he was running mechanical front beadlocks which take ages to seperate & refit!!)

Re balanced them using stick on weights & job done all sorted, No vibe's what so ever!!

So might be worth a try getting them done properly???

HTH

Kev