Over the last couple of weeks I have had a slight vibration, that from the frequency, had to be a prop shaft. Shaking the joints at each end of the front shaft showed the front one to have a detectable amount of radial play on the front joint.
So this morning I pulled the shaft out to replace this joint. When pulled apart it showed no signs of problems except that one journal had traces of rust in the grease and a slightly discolured journal.
I tossed up whether to replace the other one while I had it out, but finally decided to replace it, although there was no sign of any free play in it. This joint is shown in the attached photo. There is severe brinelling or failure of the case hardening on three of the four journals, and two of the cups had broken needles.
It is difficult to say how long it would have kept going, but in my view I was lucky to find the problem before it failed.
John
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
Thats funny John as I had almost the same experience with Casper in the last couple of weeks.
Slight vibration turned out to be a broken cap in which I found there had been plenty of grease but plenty of miles on it.
There was no movement in the diff end (front shaft) but I replaced it anyway and there was deffinate discolouration of the needles and on the uni.
I started takeing pics for a tutorial but I ran out of time (and I had the flu at the time so I lost the mood) so only got the stripping apart on camera.
Im converting the rear to uni soon so I will finish it then and post it up.
And before anyone flames me that there is no grease in it, it has gone through the hotwash at this stage so there was pretty much no grease other than right inside it.
Now this shaft has done a bare minimum of about 150,000kms on these uni's and they were original parts as the circlips were painted as were the caps with the original LR paint so Im guessing that unless someone had replaced the entire shaft at some point (Im guessing around the 150,000km mark if they did but I have no reciept for that in the box of reciepts that came with the car) that this shaft could be original........shows what a bit of grease can do hey.
Dammit, you're making me nervous.
I need to drop my front driveshaft and see how smoothly it runs, I've just started to get a small vibe just over 100km/h. I was hoping it was a tyre.
Well, I've had a vibration on overrun that is noticeable form 80km/h and up for a little while now. It's been a PITA trying to chase down what the problem is. Tyres have been swapped out, tailshaft, diff rebuilt (although that needed to be done because of muppets with no idea working on it) and it is still there!
The uni's were checked for play but none was evident, guess it won't hurt to pull them apart for a squiz. I'm thinking rear uni's for me as the rear shaft was dropped out and it seemed to stop the vibes. Uni's is much more palatable than transfer case which was the next step along the drivetrain.
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