Thread: Defender shock absorber pin wear

I have a set of "pre owned" Bilstein shock absorbers that I am about to fit. They are in good nick, but, with regard to the pin wear, should I ?
1/ Don't worry, not enough to be concerned about .
2/ Weld fill grind smooth & quench in oil
3/ Weld fill grind & smooth & let cool.


Simpson trip coming up & I don't want to stuff them up. I appreciate the heat build up must be minimal when welding.

Use Toyota cups (centralising washers) and washers, urethane bushes on the rebound side, rubber for compression.

Toy cups are seriously thick, galvanized and strong. All the 4wd accessory shops have buckets of them, used but fine.......... for giveaway if you're lucky. Otherwise they were $6 each as new spare parts.

The wear on those shafts has been caused by lack of centralising basically caused by the cups on the diff flanges. Get it right and the shafts only contact the bushes where the wear is on yours. The cups should securely hold the bushes keeping the pins away from metal to metal wear contact, if that makes sense.

You may have to enlarge the holes in the diffs very slightly to seat the cups properly, but it is well worth it, in my case 130k kms and all still fine.

Even with the rear diff flange misalignment caused by a 2" lift.

cheers, DL