Thread: dear dear, pits on my balls

From what I hear, the re-chromed ones sometimes arrive as a weird shape and leak anyway.

I de-rusted mine in molasses solution and then I filled the pits with epoxy filler - the chap who put me on to it says that his had lasted for about 3 years with araldite in the pits,

Cheers Charlie

Chazza is on the money here I think. I recall reading years ago in the UK Land Rover Owner magazine about the poms having this problem - lots of salt on their roads. Rather than replace they cleaned, filled and then sanded them back to smooth. I don't recall this repair having a limited life and my Alzheimers is working well this morning and I can't recall what that filler was that they used. Sorry about that.

[QUOTE=Grumbles;1563592]Chazza is on the money here I think. I recall reading years ago in the UK Land Rover Owner magazine about the poms having this problem - lots of salt on their roads. Rather than replace they cleaned, filled and then sanded them back to smooth. I don't recall this repair having a limited life and my Alzheimers is working well this morning and I can't recall what that filler was that they used. Sorry about that.[/QUOTE

I remember articles like that....may even be able to find them. I think they were using two-pack epoxy of some sort.

Quik Steel is the one I used but there seems to be heaps of varieties in the shops. The critical thing is to totally eliminate the rust first,

Cheers Charlie

My Series 1 had just 2 or 3 deep pits in the swivel housings. I derusted and used a liquid metal epoxy in the pits. Careful scraping and sanding gave a smooth surface for the seal.
No problems to date.

Colin

Thanks all, the metal epoxy sounds easy enough to do in house and a hole lot cheaper.

It's not the chroming that's the issue so much as the re-ginding. If you look for a hydraulic piston rechroming shop they will specialise in hard chroming. I had to find someone to re-chrome steering box shafts many a year ago and they were ok as they were just straight and could be ground as a staight shaft.

The balls being curved and also offset are a cow to setup on center and grind. I had them done. I only had a set done once, we filled the pits as described then whetstone it smooth and chromed a thick (for chroming) layer that pretty much self levels.

I have used this company (open sight below) in Adelaide to rechrome a couple of sets of swivel hubs in the past 12 months they do a good job and know how to surface grind them correctly they even show a picture of a landrover swivel hub in there advert
Poverty, our lastest project got done with knead it as time and budget did not allow us to send them away

Hodgo
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