Thread: Salisbury diff housing failures

Originally Posted by steveG

Which points to the loading being in a normal (ie usual) direction rather than a jacked on the center housing one.

Obviously landrover thought that the standard tubes were too light for heavily loaded vehicles hence the thicker tubes for 110HD and 130's, but to me the thing that would be much nastier than the actual load is a heavily loaded vehicle that's too lightly sprung and frequently contacting the bump stops. Particularly heavy contact like you get on sand dunes etc.

Wonder if that's been the case with this vehicle?

Given the number of 110's that are running round quite a bit over GVM, its surprising that there aren't more breakages if it was just a general load issue.

Steve

Fatigue failures, which that was, always have a large variation in their life.

They are caused by cyclic loads, with the important issues being the number of cycles (life), magnitude of the loads, whether the loads are in the same direction, or reversed (reversed is much much worse), stress raising factors, and a flaw/imperfection (can be very small) where a crack can start. Fatigue involves cumulative damage over the life of the member, and Miner's Rule tells how to account for this.

So while everything you said is valid, it doesn't rule out other contributions. What I'm getting at is another example of fatigue failure of the axle tube could indicate a completely different scenario. It is not wise to rule them out on the basis of one example.

IMHO, the load is very important, but as far as the Salisbury design is concerned, the big issue in this type of failure is the thin wall of the axle tube at the edge of the cast diff housing.

As a tour operator in East Africa running 130's, we see rear axle housings break often. Main culprit is diff housings bottoming out when wheels go in very deep wheel ruts, the diffs bottom out, the wheels hang and load up the joints where the axle tubes fit the diff housing. The tubes crack and leak then break off if not noticed. We try to strengthen with over and under strapping, but given time same occurs. Some drivers just cant keep out of those deep ruts.

Looks like my Salisbury axle housing is failing.
It's a light duty 21S under my '85 County.

I only noticed last week after buying some of Rijidij's caliper brackets for a disc conversion, and I was having a look at what was involved.

I haven't been off-road for a year since my youngest was born, and not too sure when it started.

For me the symptom is diff oil seaping from 3 of the plug welds in the cast diff casing on the long axle tube side.

Cheers
Andre

With all of these issues they really needed to go to a one piece housing with a HD diff with some clearance.

Oh, hang on....

Originally Posted by LRCounty

Looks like my Salisbury axle housing is failing.
It's a light duty 21S under my '85 County.

I only noticed last week after buying some of Rijidij's caliper brackets for a disc conversion, and I was having a look at what was involved.

I haven't been off-road for a year since my youngest was born, and not too sure when it started.

For me the symptom is diff oil seaping from 3 of the plug welds in the cast diff casing on the long axle tube side.

Cheers
Andre

130s have thicker tubes. If you can find one a 130 housing would be good to swap in.

So whats the easiest fix for these to prevent failure? Laminate the inside of the axle tubes all the way into the cast housing?

Sent from my SM-G900I using AULRO mobile app

Originally Posted by Vern

So whats the easiest fix for these to prevent failure? Laminate the inside of the axle tubes all the way into the cast housing?

Sent from my SM-G900I using AULRO mobile app

Other than getting a 130 housing (still not guaranteed to stay in one piece going by RoverRover's post above), internal reinforcement is the only way I can see working well. If done properly it should at least keep you mobile if the main tube does crack. I'm guessing its not a case of a standard size piece of pipe going in there perfectly though, so would require machining either of the insert tube or the housing itself (possibly both).

Rijidij has the only one I've seen done that way. Possibly done by Maxidrive along with the locker.

Steve

Thanks Steve. Just thinking its something i should do