Category: drive shaft

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Gearing Up for SCARR, Part Three, Maintenance (Post #463) 3/13/2014

A big part of not breaking down on the trail or on the highway for that matter is maintenance. Most Americans neglect maintenance. It’s easy to forget about maintenance. You go out to the driveway you jump in you turn the key and you drive. Our Land Rovers become “magic boxes that take us places”. If you don’t see a light blinking nothing is wrong, right?

Well partly, nothing is wrong most of the time, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t GOING WRONG. Let us take tonight’s maintenance. Grease zerks needing grease. If you let these go dry you lose your drive train. Universal joints can fail and then you have large heavy objects spinning very quickly. JagGuy lost his Range Rover Classic due to a failed u-joint. The drive shaft went through the side of the transmission. You don’t want that. Thankfully I have a storm shelter drive bay in my garage now and that should make greasing an easier task and it did.
There’s more after the jump…

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The Millennium Falcon made by Land Rover (Post #458) 3/5/2014

Millennium FalconI was grounded this weekend with what is probably bronchial pneumonia. Lots of coughing, a very high heart rate from the medications, and an overall very tired feeling. Being relegated to the couch and bed all weekend, I watched a lot of television. I watched an entire afternoon of Star Wars movies. Episode 4 and Episode 5 mostly. I’m not a fan of The Muppet Show Episode 6 due to the ridiculous effort to cutesy-fy the franchise and merchandise the crap out of it. Okay back to the main point I came here to write.

The Millennium Falcon is obviously a Land Rover.

By now you must be saying “What.the.hell?” So hear me out…. Continue reading “The Millennium Falcon made by Land Rover (Post #458) 3/5/2014”

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Bad news, good news, bad news (Post #84) 8/20/2007

Once again I spent my Saturday under my Discovery. This time to find the ominous noise that to me sounds like I’m dragging a wrench under the truck as I drive.
This is the sound. (4MB mpg file) Listen for yourself.
I swapped the new front drive shaft out with the old one. And I replaced the rear driveshaft front U-joint. The one that connects to the brake drum. And before you ask, yes I took the brake drum off and checked the brakes and checked if something in there was loose.
I also drained and replaced the transaxle oil. And good thing I did. It smelled burned and was a nasty dark color.
Did any of this fix my sound? Nope, nope and nope.
So I’m left with 2 differentials and 2 CV joints I guess.
I have to believe it is a CV joint.
The CV joints on the Disco are not like the Range Rover. I have to believe what ever the sound is it is not floating in oil of some kind. Which leaves me only the CV joints. I checked the differentials and they are full of lube as well.
I think I’m going to seek some outside assistance and then start guessing with parts. As I can’t stand this sound any longer. When what ever it is brakes free it makes a horrible crunch sound that you can just barely catch at the end of the clip. And that wasn’t one of the really loud times. On Thursday night I thought I’d hit a boulder in the road.
As always your comments are welcome.

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Noises from underneath (Post #82) 8/17/2007

Well crap!
I swapped the drive shaft and the roto-flex on the Discovery. And driving it out of the lot I’m hearing a sound like I’m dragging a wrench under the truck. Seriously, that’s what it sounds like. What on earth is that?
I didn’t have much luck on the LRO message board with anyone experiencing this sound before. I’ll try to get a recording of the sound just for documentation’s sake.

So this week I’ve heard sounds from under there that sound like everything from a bad CV joint to a failing U-joint. There is only one U-joint still under there that is original. I bought the replacement from NAPA and will put in on tomorrow (Saturday). I’m going to have to hope until then that the noise is that last U-joint.

On a side note, if you are doing this job, you have to think the reason for this project is to replace the UN-serviceable parts with serviceable ones. But while your at it why not just replace the additional U-joint and make it a total refurb? With that in mind, why don’t the companies that offer kits to do this job offer all the parts to do a COMPLETE job? I’m not sure if I got shorted but the kit only had half the crown nuts one would expect on a job like this. With the rule, “You never reuse a crown nut.” you will have to do an additional trip to the hardware store to complete the job.

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Drive shaft replacement this weekend (Post #81) 8/10/2007

I’m going to do the drive shaft replacement project on the Discovery this weekend. I purchased the drive shaft and such a few months ago and have finally got a weekend loose to finish it. I will be able to use my buddy, JagGuy’s lift so this should go swimmingly well. I’ll take lots of pics and get a Tech Tip write up as soon as I am able.

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