Locking hubs

The early finned alloy Warn hubs are as weak as a very weak thing. The inner drive member, adapted and machined from a 10 spline Jeep/Scout version has a very thin wall thickness and shears easily.
The alloy Selectro hubs aren't much good either, but early versions had a case hardened steel body and were very strong. But the pot metal locking/unlocking cam rings tended to break after a bit of use. There were strong aftermarket cam rings availabe back in the day.Not anymore.
The Shute Upton hubs are crap. I rolled my first Landy halfway down a mountainside years ago when I lost front drive after the pins on one of the hubs turned into the free position.
The version that looks and operates similar to Selectro is probably made by Fairey.I have no personal usage experience with these although they appear well made. Good used ones are hard to find because most people don't know how to remove them without smashing the twist knob.
Bill.

Ok i currently have the warn free wheeling hubs on the front and after taking them off to put in some new seals and check out the wheel bearing etc i found that they are very bad, the little pins that run around the inside of the driving member had fallen out and where all over the place, letting the outside gear that runs on the end of the halfshaft flop around, which would not have been a good thing if i had put it into 4wd once it was running,

I have now decided on the advice of another land rover owner to get the power lock hubs being the ones with the 2 'coin slot holes' however i have searched google (have not yet spoken to my parts people) and can no find them anywhere. These ones are a lot stronger than the warn or any other like them and yes you can have them on lock constantly.

if anyone does know where i can get these or has some they are willing to sell please let me know

If you read the thread above, and various other locking hub threads, you will see that the consensus is that freewheeling hubs do not give any benefit on a Land Rover, and create a raft of potential problems.

The Power-Lock hubs were made by Cutlass Manufacturing. Some information here; CutlassHub

Personally, after reviewing all the information I could find, I decided to remove the freewheeling hubs. The thing that I found most disturbing was the concept that under certain circumstances (broken rear axles or propshaft) freewheeling hubs can result in the handbrake not working! Being a transmission handbrake, if a hub is free to rotate the wheels can turn even when the handbrake is on. The thought of being stuck halfway up a hill with no drive and no handbrake is not one I relish!

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Originally Posted by Landygirl

Ok i currently have the warn free wheeling hubs on the front and after taking them off to put in some new seals and check out the wheel bearing etc i found that they are very bad, the little pins that run around the inside of the driving member had fallen out and where all over the place, letting the outside gear that runs on the end of the halfshaft flop around, which would not have been a good thing if i had put it into 4wd once it was running,

I have now decided on the advice of another land rover owner to get the power lock hubs being the ones with the 2 'coin slot holes' however i have searched google (have not yet spoken to my parts people) and can no find them anywhere. These ones are a lot stronger than the warn or any other like them and yes you can have them on lock constantly.

if anyone does know where i can get these or has some they are willing to sell please let me know

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I have a set of them don't know what they are like contact me if your interested. I could take them off and sent some pics.

I concur with Warb - get rid of the stupid things,

Cheers Charlie

If running with drive flanges, doesn't this mean the whole front axle from hubs to diff to gearbox is turning and wearing the whole time you are driving? Surely this can't be good - I would have thought at first that regardless of the fuel consumption issue, components used only for the 4wd function turning constantly when using 2wd would be a superfluous thing? I would have thought that it would result in more wear, more drag and more noise especially on the highway.

To qualify this, I do not do much if any off road work so rarely engage them anyway. I have heard of people removing the front driveshaft and running them as 2wd only as well.

if you're never going to use fourwheel drive then you can pull a whole lot of bits out to get rid of some mass and to reduce wear.

Trust me on this. go back to the normal permanent drive setup and deal with the minor piffling that it costs you in fuel, acceleration and braking distance. Its worth it to maintain the knowledge that a, the swivel pins (which hold the front hub assemblies on and let you steer) are being correctly lubricated and b, that when you get a taste of the kind of moronic drivers I get to deal with, get hung up on a Queensland pot hole, find a slimey piece of grass or otherwise need the front wheels to do their bit for the locomotive process you can simply manipulate one of 2 controls inside the cab and have it happen.

One of the insurmountably great pleasures of landy driving is:- after having turned up and spent the day getting ragged on by other breed drivers calmly sitting at the wheel of the landy just after its started pouring down rain on an open field watching the mitsutoyosan drivers tail sliding, chewing up ground getting nowhere then running round in the rain and mud trying to lock in hubs so they can drive out of the rapidly quagmiring area that they've all but destroyed the surface cohesion of as you calmly snick back the red and all but Idle your way to the gate.

Its right up there along with sitting by a fire in a torrential storm blacked out house drinking a coffee hot from the fireplace while eating a jaffle snuggled up with the family wondering how the yuppies are getting on.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB-wmOYelnM]Sam the Eagle "You Are All Weirdos!" - YouTube[/ame]

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...011/12/500.jpg

Questions?

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Originally Posted by pfillery

If running with drive flanges, doesn't this mean the whole front axle from hubs to diff to gearbox is turning and wearing the whole time you are driving? No; it means the whole drive train is turning and being splashed with oil, or rubbed with grease. Using free-wheel hubs means the top swivel pins and bushes don't get lubricated and the propellor shaft bearings wear badly in one position. In addition the bearings and gears in the diff rely on bump splash to wet them, rather than thrown-oil from the crown wheel.Surely this can't be good - I would have thought at first that regardless of the fuel consumption issue, There is no fuel consumption issue - free-wheel hubs do not reduce fuel consumption to any noticeable point.components used only for the 4wd function turning constantly when using 2wd would be a superfluous thing?Perhaps so but why have a 4WD if you never intend to use it? I would have thought that it would result in more wear, more drag and more noise especially on the highway. I don't know about the noise but there is so much noise anyway I doubt that any less noise from any axle would be noticeable.

To qualify this, I do not do much if any off road work so rarely engage them anyway. I have heard of people removing the front driveshaft and running them as 2wd only as well.

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Even on-road, 4WD especially low-range, can be very useful for towing heavy loads for short distances. On gravel roads I always use High 4, it is so much safer in my opinion, not to mention the sudden change in road condition e.g. wet, or soft, which desperately needs that yellow knob to be knocked down as quickly as possible. Using 4WD also spreads the torsional loads between the two axles, instead of leaving the poor old rear axle to do everything,

Cheers Charlie

Not everyone has bad experiences with FWHs.

When I bought my Series III at 110,000 km, it had FWHs on it. When I sold it at about 300,000 km, they were still there.

In those 200,000 km, I never had any reason to regret having them there and I found them useful for the couple of things that JDNSW mentioned. The spline on the front shaft had a bit of wear when I bought it and it still had a bit of wear when I sold it. I suspect that there might have been a vibration problem at highway speeds if the front shaft had been turning, but it was never a problem at the speeds i did with the hubs locked.

I adjusted the swivel pin bearings a couple of times and replaced them once.

So while the disadvantages of FWHs may be real, it seems that it is possible to do two or three hundred thousand kilometers without them showing up.

Mine were AVM manual locking hubs.