Changed Clutch and blew the Diff!!

[Aleci]

Hoping that someone might be able to shed some light on this. Sorry its a bit long.

We had to get a new Clutch sorted out and also the steering was a bit loose, so took it into a 4x4 specialist who has done work on the car previously. He changed the Clutch, tightened up the steering, and I drove it round the block just to make sure that it appeared to be running OK, which it was.

Drove home that night and the next day we set off on our trip, which was 4,000 kilometers in 5 days.

Car drove at normal velocity, 110km per hour, no vibration, no problems etc. After about 800 kilometers we blew a tyre, rear driver side, so we changed for the spare and tried to get the original one repaired, but it was a goner, balloon type bulge from the inside out. We managed to get a used spare just to make sure we were covered and off we went.

When we parked up at night, it was the first time that we had driven slow or, in a tight circle, and we were getting tyre screech at less than 10 km per hour, which I put down to the type of tarmac.

We continued on the rest of the way, and apart from a little bit of a noisy clutch change there was nothing too untoward. We stopped at a tyre centre with the intent of buying two new tyres, and mentioned about the screechy tyres, but they could not see any problems, and perhaps it was a little bit of an allignment problem, although there was no vibration, and we should get it alligned once we had completed our journey. They did not have our tyre size.

On the way back, another tyre blew, this time the rear passenger side, and we were forced into using the used spare, so that we could drive the 5 kilometers to the nearest town. It became apparent that the tyre screech was now a lot worse, so we drove at about 20 kilometers per hour, just to get to the nearest town and buy new tyres.

We did not arrive, big bang, and after looking under the car we saw that the oil was pouring out of the rear Diff, caused by a piece of metal that had speared its way through the casing from the inside out, which appears to be a broken Differential Cross Shaft.

Later when I looked, I noticed that the Differential Lever was in forward position, Diff position, but the car had been driving normally, at normal speeds, and I remembered the mechanic telling his guy to take the car out of Diff as he was pulling out of the yard so that I could test drive it. And it drove normally, and I had no need to either check the lever or alter it.

So can someone please tell me what the hell happened, I am assuming that they did something wrong when they put the new clutch in, because the Diff lever is positioned wrong, but as I said it was driving at normal speeds, not with a Diff engaged. On reading up later I noticed about squeaky tyres, blown tires etc on other 4 x 4 vehicles so have just put it all together, but I have to go back to this mechanic and see what happened, and would prefer to know what it could be. Any help would be appreciated.

Discovery 1, 1998.

[scatt]

Normally when the transfer box lever is forward that's low range, it has to be pushed left to engage diff lock. I'm no expert but it sounds like it was in diff lock! And it wound the diff up until it went bang. And obviously destroyed your tyres in the process. I can't see how fitting a clutch should cause this problem unless your garage didn't put the transfer box linkages back on correctly?!

[Deej]

Appears you have posted this twice but I have written an answer on the other thread in agreement with what scatt has said.