Thread: Where did my bolts go!

I have owned a '98 300Tdi for a couple of years, when I picked it up off the previous owner it had clutch problems. Whilst removing the manual gearbox to fix the clutch problem I made a "discovery", (pardon the pun), similar to yours with the exception that a number of the studs/bolts were broken off and gone completely, particularly most of the ones around the top, so as with yours, only the bottom bolts were holding things together.
I mentioned this to our local Land Rover guy, (as he supplied replacements for the absent bolts after I managed to extract all the broken ones, with, I might add, varying degrees of difficulty), and his response seemed to indicate that it was "just one of those Disco things".
So it seems that things such as that must have been "factory stock" because at only 170K I doubt that my gearbox would have been out before, causing the bolts/nuts to be over-tightened or left loose enough to be "fatigued", which is the most likely cause of the failure.
Maybe some of the guys on here who work for a living on Landies might have seen some of this, but our guy was not surprised and he's been spannering Landies for 35years.

J,

That is unfortunately not uncommon, we've even seen sections of ally bellhousing broken off and missing, too

did you get into trouble when you got home? Or have you hidden it behind the shed....


JC

Haha thanks guys.

I better get to work with some thread locker.

I actually drove it down like that Justin, I figured it had been like that for a while anyway.

That old saying about "Don't let my wife sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them" holds true when it comes to car parts too :P Nah, I was only a little bit over budget thankfully so she calmed down after a while.

That reminds me - I need a few things... I'll send ya a PM!