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.

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I asked Mr. Fisher to come over and help. Its easier to grease while some one else positions the truck. So he moved the truck and I greased.

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There are several universal joints to grease. There are also drive shafts to grease. I also have one tie-rod end to grease. Basically you are following your drive train from the to the front differential and to the rear differential. I did spot one small problem, one of the universal joints is installed in such a way that the zerk can’t be accessed. That will need to be changed.

Leaking Differential

Looking under the rig for the source of the muffler sounds I noticed my rear differential’s front seal weeping lubricating oil.  The lovely gray paint job I applied after the drive shaft was replaced is now a rust color. Disappointed in my painting skills, I checked the diffs and are they are very full.

You can see I had my work cut out for me. I’m trying to decide if I need to change my transmission fluid as well. It can’t hurt, fresh fluid is always nice. The costs are adding up so I may skip the transmission fluid swap. All this maintenance comes with 205,000 miles on the clock. It’s not being done according to the tick sheets mostly because I haven’t been keeping up with the tick sheets at all during the life of this Land Rover. Maintenance is done fairly often and probably should have been written down but alas I am a lazy document-er when it comes to mechanicing.

Gearing Up for SCARR, Part One

Gearing Up for SCARR, Part Two

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.