Thread: It's always the obvious stuff!

Past few weeks I've been doing some finishing touches on the D1 to get it ready for RWC inspection, to get ready to try to sell it.

Firstly had to refit original steering wheel. I had a Nardi sports style wheel for about 40years(among other nice-ish wheels) but the Nardi suited the D1 nicely. anyhow, leather got old and worn so HAD to be removed, could be undersized too, but anyhow, I had remotes for cruise control and radio, so had to jiggerise the original wheel to get them to stay put too. All worked fine until I then found speedo stopped working. ????

Anyhow, I must have pulled or pushed something under the dash and set it off. Pulled apart the dash cowl figured out the speedo, then put it together again and very loud annoying vibratory rattle now from the dash cowl. After more stufferizing and jiggery pokery, turned out it was the instrument cluster anyhow, not the cowl. Small piece of strategically place foam stopped that now. This took over a day to work out, thinking it was cowl, plastic welding some strength into the front clips, etc.

Test drive, wheel is crooked, but I had to replace the stg intermediate shaft anyhow so that was going to get done too. There was a persistent steering knock on bumps, my two go too bits for this are shocker bushes, and either damper or it's bushes. All bushes were fine. Tiniest bit of play in the intermediate shaft upper joint wasn't the cause either. New shaft didn't do anything.
At the same time I thought, may as well have a go at alignment too. Brother bought a cheapo alignment kit, just two L angle rails that bolt onto hubs. Works ok. Alignment was wayyyyy out. 10mm of toe-in! Anyhow, I got it better, hard to get it to 1mm toe-out using tape measures, but the specs are supposedly 0-2mm out anyhow. Test drive had it better, but stg wheel still just a bit off, and the persistent and annoying knock on bumps still not resolved. All joints and bushes and bolts in good order too. Anyhow, taking wheels off again to check alignment I then noticed a 1/2mm of slack in the wheels top/bottom, vertically. Checked laterally and nothing obvious. Again first thing that crossed mind was damned swivel pins. As I was under car trying to spot swivels as I heaved on wheels, finally crossed the very slow mind ... idiot!!! ... wheel bearings!

... doh! ... quick check of bearings and yep, they were just a bit loosey. a quick nip up with hub spanner, from Mike at BritRest ... I find that just hand tight on the hub socket, just holding the socket by hand does them nicely.

Test drive ... Whoohoo!!! ... finally after so many klms of this steering knock doing my head in, wheel bearings was the problem all along.

Anyhow, the last check the obvious stuff first moment. Last thing to sort was the rear diff leak. I think pinion seal was leaking anyhow, but changed that and stupid thing still had oil coming down.
Next thing to 'sort' was the diff to housing seating. Someone previous had used orange RTV type stuff between diff and housing ... so some rear diff work had previously been done before. Dunno when or nothing!
This should have been the obvious tell to 'check the obvious stuff first'!!

Two hours of degreasing and cleaning muck off, finally got the outside clean, just to run a bead of RTV along where it looked like the leak was coming from.
And because there was teeny tiny amounts of oil on the three lowest nuts, I thought while waiting for RTV to dry up, I'll remove them three, clean and then use a small dollop of thread seal, just in case the leak was the studs.
DAMNED! ... all nuts on the diff were just over hand tight!
I checked the Nm for these nuts, and RAVE says 41Nm. I think could have been 15 max on the upper nuts, but definitely lower nuts came off with barely any force. I think that's why the orange RTV couldn't contain the oil .. too busy holding the diff to the axle too!

A Day in the Life. Sounds like a good name for a song.