Thread: fitting new axles and drive flanges

Due to a noisy bearing in my rear, I had a look at the condition of the axel and drive flange and found they were pretty chewed out.




this was causing a lot of slop in the drive train which could only be avoided by being super soft on the clutch.

I got onto Karcraft as I also wanted to get some new front springs from them, and I ordered new axel's, Drive flanges, bearings and seals.
(PM me for price list. )

Here's how to do it if your not sure... in 20 easy steps! lol

1. Remove wheel.

2. Put up on axel stands as a bottle jack under the axel is not too safe when your putting your head under wheel hub

3. Remove rubber cap off axel stub.

4. Remove 5 Bolts out of Drive flange

5. Remove Clip stopping Drive flange from coming off end of Axel. This can be done after sliding axel out.

6. you now have access to the big 52mm locknuts that are holding the hub on. Remove them either with your 52mm socket you just happen to have, or the other way is with a big hammer and chisel, just hit it the way it needs to spin, counter clockwise. nasty, but does the job.

7. once locknuts are off, remove Brake disc calliper. first is to unscrew your break line and fit a 6mm rubber or clear pvc plastic hose over the end and feed it into a jar to catch all that nasty break fluid. Then get your 13mm ring spanner onto them strange looking star headed nuts holding the calliper on, and undo them. they will be tight so a standard 13mm ring spanner may be too short. get yourself a real big ring spanner and hook it over the open ended end of your 13mm spanner and lever off it.

8. now you have the Calliper off you can slide the whole hub off.
If you are NOT replacing the bearings, be careful your bearings dont fall out of the hub into the dirt when you remove the hub.
The outer Bearing will have a spacer on it, like a thick lock washer, that the big 52mm lock nut was pressing on. be careful not to lose this. make note of which way was facing the bearing. you will re-fit this against the new bearing.

9. Grab the rollers out of the outward face of the hub and you'll need to lever out the grease seal from the inside face of the hub to get access to them rollers. Clean out all the grease.

10. Get a hammer and punch and tap out the cup bearings from the inside one at a time.

11. Fit new Cups by putting the old one on top fat edge down on top of the new ones thin edge. This will allow you to tap it out again when the new one is fully fitted. Careful not to fit them backwards, you need the thin edge of the cup facing out so that the rollers will drop in remember.
You will need to use both of the old Cups to get the new one tapped right in and seated properly.

12. Drop new Rollers into the inside face of the hub and then fit new grease seal. Push it into place by hand, careful to fit it with the open edge where you can see into it and it's spring interior facing in towards the bearings.
once you've got it fitted in snuggly by hand, use the old cup again to tap in on it's hard outer edge until it is fitted in well like it was before you removed it.

13. (this step can be done as soon as you get the hub off) Remove stub axel. This is the part that the Hub actually slips onto. It also has 5 Bolts holding it in place, 3 of which hold the mount for the calliper. Once removed the stub axel will come off easily and you can remove the oil seal. If you are converting to oil lubed bearings like I did, you will not be re-fitting a new oil seal in this.
Give it a good clean out and re-fit it with new gasket and sealant.

14. Re-fit the Hub onto the stub axel and put new roller bearings into the Hub, then fit that spacer you've put aside earlier back onto the stub axel against the new bearing, the same way it was before.

15. Re-fit lock nuts with chisel or socket, get it nice and tight so the bearings have a good bit of tension on them when you turn the hub.
rotate a few times and then back it off. If you've fitted Greased Bearings you should go through the procedure described elsewhere, tighten, spin wheel, loosen, tighten etc...

16. fit new lock washer and tightly fit second lock washer.

17. re-fit break calliper and break line.

18. slide in axel with new Drive flange fitted to it, along with new gasket and sealant. Tighten her up and put the big end nut on.

19. Bleed Breaks so you don't crash when you go test out the drive train for slop.

20. Re-fit tyres and take down off Axel stands.

Should now look something like this
and my drive train has absolutely no slop in it anymore, no more bang when i drop the clutch a bit heavier!

I'm going to put together a bit of a simple video of all this as well and put it up on Youtube.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQKmcE1CqHI"]YouTube- How to fit Defender Axels Drive Flanges and Bearings[/nomedia]