Thread: The Ultimate FC

For a couple of days only on SBS catch up site.
Look after about 8 mins and then again at 14 mins.
SBS On Demand | TV and Online Video - The Lakes With Rory McGrath Ep10 - Amphibious Vehicles On Tour

The things we learn the hard way.
Each side of a stalwarts wheels are timed to each other.....ie the drain plugs on the hubs must be all pointing the same way.
I found on refitting one wheel station I could not refit it unless the drain plug on the hub/wheel station I was fitting was 90 degrees out of phase.
The way the splines between the tracta and tracta joints work they must be aligned certain way too.
The answer was easy during refitting if I knew.
The hub reduction ratio is 4.125
All I had to do was keep spinning the hub around and sooner or later the dogs on the tracta joint and hub drain plug would have lined up.
The following pics is the inner tracta joint apart in the workshop.
Each pic is taken exactly one turn on the hub.........note the different positions of the dogs on the tracta joint.

Some boffin can work out how many turns of a ratio of 4.125 you need to get though all the different positions and get back to the first postion.
I am waiting on some special wire clips to reassemble the thing again.
Saracen items are the same, the stalwart does have extra sealing O rings in the housings etc to keep things more water tight.
I have with a bit of difficultly been able to find them in Australia.
The other thing I am learning is to reassemble the tracta joint dogs takes a little bit of luck as there is only a few thou clearance between the side faces of the dogs and therefore getting the dogs to mate together inside a sealed housing is tricky especially when they tend to move about bit when fitting.
....Ron

The stalwart has become very close to being scrapped or a match lit in its 450 litre fuel tank.
The latest progress report is I have my RHS front wheel station back on.
I has taken me at least 3 full work days to fit it.
Everything that could go wrong or I could stuff up happened.
One problem is I have no help in doing things and bleeding brakes and moving heavy stuff into place is really a two man job.
No matter how I tried I could not refit the inner tracta joint with out the dog inside turning and flipping its self side ways out of alignment.
What I did do is split the drive between the two tracta joints fit the inner one which is much easier without the whole 200 kg of wheel station hanging on it.
Then all I needed to do was time and line up the splines etc........should be easier ....right ?



The answer is no, as the inner tracta joint and shaft with splines has end float which stops the locking pin hole from lining up.
It took about ten tries moving the wheel station in and out of the splines and suspension pins etc to figure all this out.
Everything possible fought me to put it back together.
I did learn a lot.............next time I will pack the inner tacta joint with thick grease to hold the drive dog in the correct position or use match sticks or something to hold it .