This weekend. Convert from grease to oil!

[Rimmer]

G'day,

Nice to be able to put some faces to names now. I had an entertaining time last night at the meeting. Lots of interesting people and personalities. Thankyou very much for making me feel welcome into the fold.

This weekends job is to convert bearings and CVs' over to oil.

I'm confident with the procedure, just after some advice and comment on some mods along the way.

1. Would you reccomend drilling a hole (3mm) in the stub axle between the bearings to aid oil getting to the outer bearing? I understand the benefit but, will or can it weaken the stub axle?

2. Being a TD5 the Swivel housing only has the one fill point, Intended for that one shot grease stuff. Supposedly for the life of the vehicle.
Anyway what does everyone think about tapping a hole to be able to drain the swivel housing? My plan is to knock all the seals out so the same oil does the diff, cvs' and bearings.
I intend to make some sort of dip stick to check the level from the fill point.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Tod.

[THE 109]

Tod

The early rangies have oil lubed bearings all round and there's no hole drilled in the stub axles,if you did drill them I don't think it would weaken them enough to worry about.

What height is the filler point on your swivel hub?
Fitting a drain to the bottom is a good idea.
Series vehicles had their filler halfway up and doubled as the level,rangies had the filler up higher and used a small hole halfway for the level.

As for the seal between the diff and CV's I would keep it in there,that way if one section gets water in it not all your oil gets contaminated.

Cheers Eric

[harry]

sorry tod, i didn't get a chance last night to say gidday personally.
on to the question
your swivel housings should have have a drain hole'
i suspect it is a 7/16 hex plug that looks like a long headed bolt,

there shouldn't be any need to dril any holes, just pull the seals out, the iol will find its way in, don't remove the grease, it will provide the lube while the oil is finding the way to the bearings.

personally, i would leave it the way land rover built it,
greaes in the wheel bearings and one shot grease, and dill oil in the diff, and leave all the seals in place.
if a seal fails, the lubricants will mix, this isn't a problem, and if you want to change the swivels lubricant at some time, just top up with diff oil.

i like to keep it simple, why do all that work to get the diff oil to flow into wheel bearinga and swivels, given time it will do it by itself, and if you are an oil changing nutter, like myself, you still have to drain both swivels and the diff to change the oil.

the other concern i have about removing the seals and letting it all mix easily, is that if one component fails, it quickly transfers the contamination to all the other parts,
it is amazing how far metal in the oil from a crunched diff can travel, whilst you are moving the vehicle to easy ground to repair it, aside from the possibility that the diff has been making metal for the last five thousand km's.
it affects all the bearings, wheel, diff, swivel housing, and cv's, lots of dosh.

[Rimmer]

Ok, this is the reason behind the conversion.

Dropped the oils out of both diffs the other weekend. Front diff oil was a cocktail of oil and one shot grease. Not a problem i know, but thought oh well inner axle/diff seal shot. I'd heard of others converting to oil, and being a pretty simple job I thought it a good a time as any to do this. Secondly my plan is to upgrade the axles and CVs' in the future, which reccommends getting oil to the drive flanges to prevent excessive wear too.

The swivel housing (2002 TD5 Fender) does only have the one fill point, I'd say roughly at 2 o'clock. The reason I was told, being filled with one shot grease, to last the life of the vehicle. Only requireing the occasional top up.

In saying that I'll still be going back in the morning to triple check there is no drain plug there.

I understand and would normally leave things as manufactured, but while I had everything apart the other day to see what was involved. I took the liberty to remove the inner axle/diff seal as it wasn't sitting square anyway after pulling the axle out?

Like yourself Harry I'm guilty too of changing oils too frequently, but it gives me something to do and makes me feel good.
My theory being by opening up the diff, CVs' and bearings to the one lubricant. I plan to drop it maybe every second, third time I do the engine oil or after encountering mud, water or any other good stuff that may find it's way in there.

Please tell me there is some merit in this or am I wasting my time, money and creating an opportunity for additional woes?

Thanks,
Tod.

[jakeslouw]

I'm a lazy sod, so IMHO, the only time to replace the diff and swivel oil is a) when you reckon it's been contaminated b) if the service intervals indicates it c) if you've lost most of it marking the driveway.....

[buzz66]

As previously mentioned, the early Rangie's had shared oil for the wheel bearings and diff.

The reason that changed it was SAFETY, yeah right give me a break!
The theory is the extra seal is another stop gap to prevent oil leaking onto the brake discs.

AS for the rear axle It's a no brainer. Remove the outer seal and let them run in oil. If you were to break a diff, then you would pull over and pull the axles and remove the tail shaft anyway to prevent further damage. The residual oil in the bearings is good enough to drive for a couple of hundred KM's, with no ill effects on the bearings.

As for the front. It depends on the vehicle. If you have the weaker 32 spline CV joints them maybe leave the seals in place. If you break one they turn to shrapnel in a heart beat. If you have the stronger 10/23 spline CV's or 110 type then the breakage of the latter types are no problem. Nice big chunks

All things being equal I believe the advantages of gear oil feeding C.V's and bearings is better than the grease. The bearings will do 200,000 easy in diff oil. Then all you need to do is change the diff oil and forget the rest. The small amount sitting in the Swivels when doing an oil change is not worth worrying about.
The oil level in the swivels is lower with this mod, for obvious reasons.
As for drilling the Stub. Forget it. The oil gets it way to the bearings just fine.
The results speak for themselves.

I just replaced the bearings in the rear of my Rangy Trailer conversion and Replaced only the inner hub seal. I ditched the outer seal.

Rick & Mal Story are both Range Rover experts and they believe the Good Oil is the way to go. Go hard and remove the seals.
Except for the inner hub seal of course!