Thread: Has anyone had/heard of badly worn axle spines shearing off?

Yep, really common on greased lubed bearing Defenders.

Originally Posted by rick130

Yep, really common on greased lubed bearing Defenders.

indeed the three wheels that suffer from this had pretty lumpy dried up grease, the 4th was nice grease, lead me to think its lack of lubrication that leads to the wear,

you say 'really common' are you saying the wear is common or catastrophic shear failure is common ?

ok bye

Both.

An old acquaintance was stranded on the edge of the Simpson with stripped drive flanges quite a few years ago.

My 130 had virtually no splines left @ 76,000km when I bought it.
How it hadn't totally stripped and left someone stranded was beyond me.

Yes it's a lubrication issue, some regularly pull the drive flanges and re-grease, the real fix is to pull the inner axle seal and install an RTC3511 hub seal.

Diff oil can then flow through the axle tubes and lube the splines and bearings, just like an early 110 or Series Landy.

Problem solved.

Originally Posted by toc_bat

indeed the three wheels that suffer from this had pretty lumpy dried up grease, the 4th was nice grease, lead me to think its lack of lubrication that leads to the wear,

you say 'really common' are you saying the wear is common or catastrophic shear failure is common ?

ok bye

Severe wear and catestrophic failure is common.Once you obtain replacement shafts and flanges, dig out the oil seals from inside the stub axles, fit proper double lipped oil seals to the hubs so that the fresh shafts are lubricated from the diff oil.
Bill.

thanks for all the keen replies.

how about welding the flanges to the axles, hehehee

Hi toc_bat

Sloppy splines cause shock loads to the axles, they then break!

Like they said, change to oiled wheel bearings.

Don't weld the splines together, the heat treatment is mucked up enough to break the spline at the flange end.

Scratch up some money and replace the old axles and flanges, with some nice new heavy duty ones.

.

I've got a set of used axles and drive flanges - showing a bit of wear but not too bad - that you are welcome to as a temporary fix if yours are really bad at present. PM me if you're interested - I'm in the Hornsby area.

These were removed from a Td5 110 a few years ago when I fitted some Maxidrive axles/flanges for a friend. He was unaware of the wear until the axles were removed and he was shown the play between the axle and drive flange.

toc_bat is interested in above offer so ..............

Can anyone advise if the rear axles/drive flanges from a 2002 Td5 Defender are interchangable with those from a 1995 300Tdi Defender - both fitted with Salisbury diffs?

I'm pretty sure they are but it would be reassuring to have confirmation from the more knowledgable before possibly wasting toc_bat's time.