Swivel rebuild on a Classic Rangie front axle

[peteb2]

I've been seeing increasing amounts of oil appearing on the brake rotors vent openings, some slinging on the rims and the "you do something soon" drip patches on the ground directly below the drag-link ball joint when parked for a while...

So last night i tore down the LH unit. The biggest issue i found is the hub inner seal had burst and failed, maybe because it had never been put in properly by the someone before. My other concern was the number of loose finger-tight bolts....

The swivel itself is on this side has done a ton of work, not rusty or pitted on it's surface (i can see as plain as day the RH one is) but it has a few marks and dings that will compromise a new oil seal fairly quickly.

The assembly had been 'converted'' to OneShot grease so interesting cleaning all that out...

I've found and watched the youtube videos on the project, read up everything i can find because i have never been through one of these before.

There's a little interesting issue though. Since the axle has been turned over (i believe) because the machine has the 3.9i in the rear the swivel has been re-drilled so it mounts on the axle end to restore the proper 'king pin' angle.... hhmmmm.

I love taking on projects like this and it could be all very interesting putting replacements swivels on the drill press before i can hope to use them so i plan to make a few photos....

I hope none of you are scratching your heads over this right now but any input would be great...

[muddymatt1973]

Hi,

Are you going to use grease again or go back to oil?
My advice is to stick to the grease. Heaps better.
The seals themselves are quite vunerable to dirt and crap damage. Probably why on S2 discos onwards they changed completely and went with an exposed UJ.
I have seen the gaiters used but not run them my self so can't comment on the effectiveness.

One other point. If you have adjusted / removed the steering stops then the seals will be running on a slightly different portion of the swivel ball when you are at full lock. This can cause the leaks to be worse at full lock than straight ahead.

Cheers,

Matt

p.s - good luck drilling the housings!!

[peteb2]

Hi,

Are you going to use grease again or go back to oil?
My advice is to stick to the grease. Heaps better.
The seals themselves are quite vunerable to dirt and crap damage. Probably why on S2 discos onwards they changed completely and went with an exposed UJ.
I have seen the gaiters used but not run them my self so can't comment on the effectiveness.

One other point. If you have adjusted / removed the steering stops then the seals will be running on a slightly different portion of the swivel ball when you are at full lock. This can cause the leaks to be worse at full lock than straight ahead.

Cheers,

Matt

p.s - good luck drilling the housings!!

Yes, i will go the grease route for certain. I want to get back down my basement and get stuck in washing all the parts to see just where i am... Legend has it from the guy i bought it off the vehicle was originally made in the UK by a British Army engineer who'd access to a mountain of dead military Rangies...

The steering stop bolt will need replacing as the LH one is bent! I understand the concept of centralizing the swivel pin housing correctly over the swivel using shims etc so that it sweeps "on-centre'' properly and so the seal is able to do it's thing.

I am already a bit concerned over the swivel thing though. Obviously they will be as hard as hell (high carbon steel)? so drilling is going to be next to impossible i assume.... I have a mill so with some really good drills or milling bits i might get it done.... i donno how hard the thing is.

Thanks for your input muddy...

[muddymatt1973]

Drilling might not be too bad. It's probably just the business end i.e chromed bit thats hard. The other end that bolts up to the diff housing might just be boggo steel.

From memory I drilled out the housing on my S1 many years ago to use metric bolts. Can't remember exactly why

I don't recall it being too hard.

Getting it set into a drill vertically and re-drilling a pattern - that is a different ball game.

Tip I'm sure you all know - when you break a front diff on a Rover (and you will) just undo the six bolts on the swivel housing to axle housing and draw the complete assay out with half shafts etc. You get enough clearance to pull the diff head.
You can leave brake lines, steering arms, free wheeling hubs ect.
You do need to remove the one behind the axle as the diff head wont clear it but thats it!

Much quicker

[De-Ranged]

Given what Ive found carving Landies and Rangies up, I would be very surprised to find the swivel balls are anything other than mild steel...
If they were high carbon why the chrome, the chrome is there to provide a hard surface for the seal

anyway if your interested I have a couple of RRC 10 spline ball/hub/axle assemblies with good chrome if your interested, I was saving them for a landy but Im just going to put disk brakes on the landy axle instead

[ice4x4]

Yes the you are right Reece, the housings are only mild steel and will be no problem drilling the mounting flange. The chrome is there to provide and hard surface but also to prevent corrosion and keep the surface smooth for the seal to run on.

[peteb2]

Well all cleaned up and a careful check done. The lower bearing surface contact in the swivel housing has been chewing away more than i would consider being able to reference off a new bearing.

Two lower M10 holes for the stub axle to bolt into swivel housing have smashed threads and i can see someone has tried to botch it by chiseling into the casting nect the holes on the inside and using heaps of RTV around those bolts to slow anything oil leaking. Guess what, it didn't work. Oh and thank the big man the flamm'n stub axle never let go completely on the remaining 4 bolts...

I think i might call the swivel housing too munted so lemme see: i am up for a pile of bits... (and i've not even torn the RH one down yet so i will assume it's been well beaten up as well)....

The wheel bearings and seals need doing on the hub and that brake disc has seen better days ....

At least the LH CV looks to be ok and was probably recently changed out.
At this stage on acct of me living in NorWest Aucks i'll do a hunt and find out what i can get locally (support the neighborhood thing) but if it doesn't play well i will come back to your offer De-Ranged.

Oh and yes, the swivel is soft enough to drill. Jig-clamping it onto my rotary table for the mill will be the go. At least all the holes i make will be on the same centre that way.... I need to be aware here of the intended 'kingpin inclination' and i must check if the current setup was 100% correct going by the other botched jobs done to the rig...

Oh should chuck some photos together just for the record and interest here... (someone needs to invent a digital point and hope camera that takes perfect pics even when your hands are covered in One Shot grease).

All good fun...!

[peteb2]

Just a few pics...

A cleaned up (it was a shocker) swivel. Check out the obvious extra holes to accommodate the flipped axle.... The advice here is the swivel looks pretty good and just needs a couple of nicks polished off with fine paper...



Broken lower threads on the outer swivel pin housing where the stub axle bolts.



This pic shows the inside and the broken threads (that new 8.8 .... yeah i will use 10.9s just keeps on turning). The other thread has had a whack to try and tighten it...



Took me yesterday to pull down another complete set from my local wrecker for a replacement... and cleaned it out. (Putting a complete set... the whole hub, disc, stub axle, swivel inner and outer plus long axle shaft... in the vice on the workbench) on your own could easily blow yer own foofoo valve... it's heavy!



Then i was onto the hub where leakage was coming from that was flicking onto the rim... The inner oil seal looks like the wrong one or had failed... I removed the bearings and seal.. The hub aint flash inside. There are lots of blow marks from chisels rather than using a brass drift to knock the bearing out... and i'm fairly certain the marks that have raised the metal are buggering up the seating of bearing outer and oil seals seating... looks like a hub change... photos coming once i wash things out (see what you think).

[peteb2]

Just ordered up hub and swivel rebuild kits that contain mostly the consumables like seals bearings etc... Spent ages getting a run-round on the phone getting retail prices for genuine but individual items and poor availability so made the decision and bought kits online.

[peteb2]

So i went a bit far and splashed some paint on the Swivel Pin Housings after a good degrease:








Had a chance late Sunday arvo (today) to do a bit more. The weather was all over the place and we'd put off two BBQs because of eminent rain so i headed to the basement.

During the week, sourcing a couple of FTC1623 bolts for the bottom swivel pin came up with a few problems. It was a long haul to locate what are just a countersunk 7/16 UNF x1.125" TORX head and in the end i had to go Genuine LandRover parts (hence the code) because there just wasn't anything around and that exercise was crazy because even the big Auckland dealers didn't have them. Luck i found some in Drury! I kept being handed the 8mm version code FTC1626 by parts places and wreckers. I could have used a 1/4"hex drive but they needed to be cut down... ie more shagging around.

Historical repairs before me had used a a permanent Loctite so i'd had to machine the chewed up head bolts out. Even the blue wrench didn't help and all i ended up with was burning up some acetylene. I know i could have dumped off that weird damper bar thing and just used normal bolts but this is a LVVTA road legal and i don't want the WOF man finding something amiss.... that'd be just my luck.



Next on went the Swivel Pin housings and i had a few minutes of greasing up and new bearings then setting their preload which with the new and old shims i have both sides are spot on...

Back in went the axles and the CVs copped a real good parts washing followed by a full grease-repacking but this is where things ground to a halt.. The rebuild kit i bought doesn't have any gaskets 571751 for between the Stub Axle and Swivel Pin Housing, looks like they doubled up on the one 571752 (for the Hub driveshaft). So for now the whole lot sits bolts all done up finger tight...

I have noticed that every fastener has had some kind of oil leak prevent goop from gasket seal to RTV added to it's thread but it's turned real hard so i have chased all the threads with a tap or die which makes it so much easier to reassemble and this time i'll use that Blue gasket goop so things can come apart for the next time... without a drama and things will stay oil-tight too.