The main gearbox was loosing oil into the transfer box, so I spent Saturday fitting a new main shaft rear seal. This meant removing the prop shaft, hand brake assembly, overdrive, speedo cable, transfer case bottom, transfer box intermediate cluster and oil thrower before access to the seal was possible. The good news is that the seal is replaceable without separating or removing the boxes. This time I used a genuine seal to replace the one that was part of the LEGS kit. It has a steel shell and was a swine to fit – I destroyed two before managing to get the third new seal in. The whole lot was then reassembled and more new oil added (giving the transmission an average oil replacement rate of once evry 2000 miles this year!). A lot of work to squeeze into one day in the freexing cold on the driveway.
I still need to replace the weeping selector shaft seals which were also in the LEGS kit – I have some new genuine o-rings and plastic expanding washers that should give a much better seal than the loose plastic collars. They’ll be done when the gearbox tunnel cover comes out for the engine swap, which will also be an opportunity for me to cure the gearstick rattle – the rubber o-ring at the bottom of the stick wears out very quickly and allows the steel ball to rattle against the selector shaft “cups”. I’m getting bored of holding the stick while driving to stop it making noise. I have a few ideas, but if anyone has found a way, please share!
Other than that, it’s running very well.
I have also inspected the Discovery that is giving up its 200Tdi engine, rad and so on for my 109. The engine had a tough time starting, and then ran very lumpiliy, but we quickly spotted a large leak from the injection pump. After about 15 seconds, it settled into a very steady and comparitively quiet idle. It seems that the leak had allowed fuel to drain down from the injectors and allow air into the fuel system, causing it the starting problems and to initially run on three cylinders. Since the engine is sporting a recently rebuilt head, has a moderate 160k on the clock and the whole engine bay contents are only costing me £300, I can afford to have the pump rebuilt with heavy duty, bio-compatible parts to run happily on SVO. That’s going to cost another £300 – not pitence, but worthwhile in the long run, especially with the current fuel prices.
I aquired a free Defender intake manifold from Rogers. It has a hole where the turbo oil fed pipe mount has been snapped off, but is easily repairable. I have also aquired a Defender intercooler and turbo to replace the Discovery ones. Both are courtessy of Luke, aka Toppa, from the LRUK forum (as per the links). The turbo was made up from his blown Defender turbo and spare Discovery turbo: we couldn’t get any information on whether they had any common parts, so as an experiment we swapped the compressor and turbine housings from the Defender turbo onto the Dicovery turbo’s core, and it’s all a perfect fit – the cores and spools are identical on all 200Tdis, it’s just the housings and waste gate actuator bracket that varies. Just the oil pipes and exhasut manifold to find, now…
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