Thread: Catastrophic Steering box failure!

Originally Posted by Rangier Rover

New genuine steering box now in and all OK.

I have decided to take the heavy duty drag link off and go back to standard.... As suggested, may act as a fuse and prevent this ever happening again.

Anyway, no leaks and drives dot on. The box costed me $650 (bit dearer than the evilbay jobs.)

I may as well get a new selector shaft for the old box and keep it in my spares as will fit the rangies.

You'll get sick of straightening them! It's the joys of an unknown old car, brand-new adwest box should be good for another 20 years!


Don't worry, it's common on early gq nissans to drop the sector shaft, luckily each time, yes a couple, it's happened we've been in the bush in ruts and nothing drastic has happened, makes for a fun recovery but

Lucky you came out at the other end

Originally Posted by PAT303

Tony,chuck it.You can buy two new box's cheaper than the shaft alone. Pat

Too right, I have just tossed it in the scrap.

Originally Posted by rovercare

You'll get sick of straightening them! It's the joys of an unknown old car, brand-new adwest box should be good for another 20 years!


Don't worry, it's common on early gq nissans to drop the sector shaft, luckily each time, yes a couple, it's happened we've been in the bush in ruts and nothing drastic has happened, makes for a fun recovery but

Lucky you came out at the other end

Damn lucky alright! Many large trees and a few concrete bridges let alone on coming traffic.

Has taken my confidence out of the four bolt box for a wile I can assure you. You know how hard I tend to drive this thing on the black top at times cause I can.

It has been suggested I need to change my driving style and also drop back to 33's.

Originally Posted by Rangier Rover

New genuine steering box now in and all OK.

I have decided to take the heavy duty drag link off and go back to standard.... As suggested, may act as a fuse and prevent this ever happening again.

Anyway, no leaks and drives dot on. The box costed me $650 (bit dearer than the evilbay jobs.)

I may as well get a new selector shaft for the old box and keep it in my spares as will fit the rangies.

Your steering rods haven't contributed to the failure. However bigger wheels and tyres have.

The shaft has broken from fatigue, under a microscope you might be able to see the propogation marks and get an idea of just how many "cycles" it took to break. It's always many thousands, sometimes millions. The three steps you can see in the shaft are where the crack has changed direction as the shaft gets weaker and the stress direction changes.

Inspection/testing is the only way to sleep at night with fatigue failures. Pull your new shaft out in a year and crack test it. Repeat at intervals until you either find a crack or gain some confidence in it.

If you ultra sonic test it you won't have to remove it,it'll be a quick job also. Pat

Got the same problem .Where did you get your new box for $650?
Mary

Dougal, what do you base this statement on: Quote:"Your steering rods haven't contributed to the failure. However bigger wheels and tyres have."
Tyres may have helped, but why are you so sure that the H/D track rod didn't have a part to play, I have off set wheels and 33X12.5's on my Disco, no H/D track rod and I have belted my front end around more than most, even had to panel beat my rims back into shape a few times. I've never bent my standard track rod, but I agree with Rangier Rover that the H/D track rod may have contributed and by putting on the standard rod he is eliminating the H/D track rod from the equation. Just saying that the tyres where the problem and the track rod was not is not good enough, where is the justification for your statement, Regards Frank.

Frank, as you've said in Vlad's thread you've never bent a standard tie rod but plenty of us have, and when you compare the size LR use to, say a GU Patrol it's minuscule and not fit for purpose IMO.
In about '02 Nissan upped the size of the arms again to at a guess >32mm (and also changed to female tie rod ends)

When I first bought the 130 ten years ago the very first parts I bought were a tie rod and drag link (as well as a pair of axles and drive flanges) from Mal and Paula Story to replace the standard rods.
Mine was bent and jamming in the silly channel under the diff.

I was aware that this was a problem and went looking for it after being advised to either make my own large diameter ones or buy some Maxi ones by my mate Mark who was an ex-JRA and LRA engineer.

All the Perenties built at JRA Moorebank had HD large diameter steering arms.

He said that Solihull wouldn't believe there was a problem with the standard ones, then, when they had a few too many bend in the UK they came up with, in his words the pathetic aluminium channel under the diff.

His old 110 had over half a million km on it when he sold it and it had OS steering arms that he'd made by cutting the ends off the stock ones and sleeving them with large OD tube.

BTW, a split tube and clamp holding the tie rod is preferable to a jam nut as it doesn't fatigue stress the thread near as badly.
The jam nut concentrates the loads at the root of only one to two threads whereas the split clamp spreads the load over more area, increasing fatigue life, so LR did one thing right compared to a lot of other vehicles.

Tony Southgate, the designer of the all conquering TWR XJR-9 and 12 Le Mans Jags in the late eighties/early nineties bucked the motor racing industry trend (we all used jam nuts, even aircraft do) and made split clamps for their cars as they had to survive a 24hr race while clobbering ripple strips the whole time.

Originally Posted by Tank

Dougal, what do you base this statement on: Quote:"Your steering rods haven't contributed to the failure. However bigger wheels and tyres have."

That failure isn't one hit or even 100, it is caused by thousands of cycles of too much stress.

That stress comes from larger tyres working the steering gear harder continually. Not from HD steering rods which only make a difference on maybe 100 impacts in the trucks life.