Thread: LT230 Input Gear

A bloody good question Paul, and one I have been wondering about myself.

Has anyone got a bloody good answer ?

The gear has 4 x 10mm holes drilled 1/2 way between the drive gear and the pto dogs. The gears are hard but you can drill them with a massonary drill bit. Buy a couple drills and sharpen them like a normal twist drill but leave a little tungsten tip proud. Use a drilling compound and take your time. You need to be carefull as you break through as the drill can get caught in the spline and break. You can buy really flash drill bits for about $80 but they break just the same. The tip on a Massonary bit works fine and they are cheap. I've done a few using this method.

Thanks for the reply Shaun. I took my input gear out over the weekend and discovered that it has not been cross drilled and there is no oil feeder plate there either. The gearbox was rebuilt before I bought the vehicle and the mainshaft does look new. The splines are still perfect at this stage. I've sent the gear off to get four 10mm holes EDM machined into it during this week since I can get it done cheaply, :wink: and it'll save me buggering up a box full of tungsten tip drills trying to do it myself. ops:


Paul [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Take a couple of pics before you whack it back in there, old boy !

When you put it back together fill the transfer box with some Penrite synth 10/10th race 75/90, it comes in 2.5L bottle just enough and you can forget about it.

OK, job done. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img] After receiving the input gear back from 'friend of a friend' who organised the holes to be put in it, it looked like this:



Sorry about the blurry photo, but I couldn't get hold of the digital camera for the weekend and had to resort to stoneage technology. You can still make out the 10mm holes that were EDM machined into it though (there are four). The best bit about the EDM process is that it leaves absolutely perfect holes with no burrs or anything to clean up. 8)

As I mentioned in another post, I had the transfer case out to replace the input seal. It was then that I discovered the twits who had rebuilt the gearbox had stuffed the seal collar rather badly, probably by not using a proper tool to remove it from the shaft. :x Amazingly, it wasn't actually leaking, but I knew if I put it back like that it soon would. :roll: The easiest solution was to put a Speedi-sleeve on the collar. That way I wouldn't have to remove the collar, and the Speedi-sleeve would probably give me a better surface than a new collar anyway (as well as being less than $30). :wink:

This is what the Speedi-sleeve looks like installed on the collar:



You can also see a bit of the remote selector housing, which turned out to be the main source of my oil leak. Note the plentiful use of (blue) silastic as well as a new gasket, just to be sure.

I've only clocked up about 30km since the job was done, so it's too early to tell whether I've been successful or not. So far (fingers crossed) there is no sign of any further leaks.

Thanks to the warning of Defute I took particular care to try and not stuff up the new seal when putting the transfer case back in. The best tip I can give for this is to leave the input gear and PTO cover etc off until the transfer case is back on the gearbox. Also remove the handbrake drum and backing plate (it's only 4 bolts plus a clevis pin). This all does two things: firstly, by removing the hanbrake assembly the transfer case is a lot lighter to lift and it's also shorter, making it easier to manoeuvre inplace, secondly, not having the input gear installed gives you more lattitude to get things lined up without having to mesh with the splines at the same time. What you don't want to do is let the bloody thing drop a bit at the last moment and stuff the seal on the shaft whilst you're lining it up!

Putting the input gear in and the handbrake assemby back on is really no more difficult with the transfer box on the vehicle because there's plently of room to get to everything.

Thanks also to shaunp for advising where on the gear the holes should be.

Anyway, that's how it all went for me. As I said, fingers crossed, I should have a completely oil leak free Defender now, but then again...


Paul [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Damn I wish I could do that mechaniocal stuff.
Would save me a fortune :!:

Looks like a nice tidy job, mate.

Vlad,

You can easily do the input gear mod yourself, without taking the transfer box out of the vehicle. It's just a matter of removing the PTO cover and the mainshaft input bearing housing (six bolts total), hoiking the input gear out and getting the holes whacked in it. You can do it like me and get someone with an EDM facility to blast the holes through for you, probably less than $100 if you pay full retail, less for cash. :wink:

Sticking the gear back in is straightforward, just remember that if there is a gasket between the transfer case and the bearing housing, you must put a new gasket back on, whether you use silicone as well or not. If there wasn't a gasket there, you must not put a gasket on, just use silicone. This is because the bearing pre-load is set by the thickness of the gasket (or it's absence), unless you want to be buggering around with a dial indicator and re-shimming the thing.

I have a pdf of the LT230 manual if you ever want it to give it a go.


Paul [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]