Thread: Life of Puma Rear Diff's

Originally Posted by zkdaz

For me better would be axle housings strong enough never to worry about bending them when bouncing fully loaded vehicle up a steep and badly rutted track.

After that priorities come down to track width, CW&P ratios for 9R16 tyres, lockers, half shaft strength, disc brakes and stud patterns. Ideally I would prefer front and rear axles to share as many components as possible. Lastly I would prefer axles from a common vehicle rather than exotic or custom, both for cost and parts availability.

As I see it, the problem is vehicles designed for greater GVM have significantly wider track than a 110. This leaves us with 3 land rover flavors (rover, p38, sals), Nissan and Toyota, none of which are ideal.

John, have you managed to get your hybrid/LC105 axles registered?

Cheers
Dan

Haven't got to Qld rego stage yet. I should be able to reduce track width to legal (+50mm over stock in Qld) if I find suitable offset wheels.

Originally Posted by isuzurover

Define bouncing??? Nissota driver 500m runup then launch type bouncing???

The small number of failed sals axles on here all seem to have been 110 variants that did lots of driving on corrugated roads while heavily loaded. So high frequency vibration leading to fatigue failure seems to be the issue, rather than bending the axles due to "bouncing" while going up hills.

That's useful to know. As my goal is an overland touring vehicle corrugations would be far more common than the odd time when you need momentum to carry you through. I had made the wrong assumption as to what would cause the failures.

Originally Posted by zkdaz

That's useful to know. As my goal is an overland touring vehicle corrugations would be far more common than the odd time when you need momentum to carry you through. I had made the wrong assumption as to what would cause the failures.

While at the Cape with the shadow casting and endless corrugations that are there, we also passed a Pajero with a snapped axle housing. I would expect that into that combination of what causes a Salisbury failure that you would also add high tyre pressures to that operating environment. We ran big bias tyres (Simex) at reduced pressures while up there and they absorbed the vast majority of the corrugations.

Originally Posted by zkdaz

That's useful to know. As my goal is an overland touring vehicle corrugations would be far more common than the odd time when you need momentum to carry you through. I had made the wrong assumption as to what would cause the failures.

That is my main usage also. I am happy to use a 110 housing, and inspect it regularly, however if I get the chance I will tube the housing internally or swap to a (thicker) 130 housing.

I have a 130 housing, I pay attention to tyre pressures on corrugations etc, and try not to overload it. This also means keeping the draw bar weight down below 200kg if at all possible.

Longrange fuel tanks and twin spare carriers all add it up....


JC

I just went to woolies and bought a trolley load of home brand cotton balls, then proceeded to wrap the whole housing in those......

Originally Posted by Slunnie

While at the Cape with the shadow casting and endless corrugations that are there, we also passed a Pajero with a snapped axle housing...

I think this is a known (if not widely admitted) problem with older Pajero rear axles. I know of one vehicle that had 2 axles fail over a 12 month period. The second failure caused a roll over that wrote the vehicle off - at the 'wrong' end of the Plenty Highway in the NT.

Originally Posted by uninformed

I just went to woolies and bought a trolley load of home brand cotton balls, then proceeded to wrap the whole housing in those......

This reminds me of the women that went into the Chemist shop, walked up to the counter and asked the chemist;

"Excuse me, do you have cotton balls ?"

"Madam, do I look like a teddy bear ?"