Aragon

In the middle of re-furbishing a spare set of front radius arms to go on mine. Maybe we could sort something with the ones that are coming off when I've finished. I paid £20 for a used pair so travelling any distance wrecks the economics.

Job delayed because the Laser Tools extraction & refitting tool set doesn't fit! Managed the extraction bit via my workshop press but not a good way to do things on your own. Those arms are heavy and hard to hold in alignment with the press Half way through making a proper set of tools for the job. All takes longer 'cos I decided to repaint the arms. Properly.

Bit scary when you look underneath to see how little there is holding the axles onto a couple of tons of truck! All the textbooks talk about how important it is to have things really rigidly fixed at tree chassis end for good handling. Practice seems to be a bit different.

Clive

Yeh i guess you've had the same idea, refurbish a spare set and then its just a nice easy swap over job rather than having to dismantle and then rebuild with the car stuck off the road.

Work has a big 20tonne press so hopefully pushing the bushes in and out wont be a problem.

I was quite impressed by how delicate looking the steering knuckles are when you compare it to the massive hunk of casting that you get on a Defender or similar!

Yup. Learned from bitter experience that first try with almost anything having push in bushes takes (lots) longer and is much harder than it ought to be! Panhard rods are easy peasy. Rest probably not.

Its not pressing the bushes out thats the issue. Its keeping things lined up for a straight true press thats hard. The arms are long, bent and heavy so holding them just so under a press takes bit of doing. Really the through bolt with "properly shaped" pusher and receiver tube assembly are a much better bet. If things are the right shape they align properly so you get a nice straight push so they come out relatively easily. Straight, dead straight is always the key.

Unfortunately the Laser 6505 Land Rover suspension bush tool omits the "properly shaped" but when it comes to P38 bushes. It also avoids the concept of "fits". With a list price of around £140 you'd have thought they could have at least supplied the right size force screw. Parts book says 12 mm bolt so you expect a 12 mm clearance hole in the bush. A 5/8 " - 16 mm Ø screw don't go through the 12 mm Ø bores in P38 bushes! Mine only cost me £100, outrageous really but figured it was almost worth it to save the effort of designing and making one. I mean the pros would get it right. Wouldn't they. Evidently not. Have had words, well E-Mails actually, with Laser about this. Initial flat out refusal to believe it didn't and couldn't work was slightly toned down given pictorial evidence and a PDF of the relevant parts book pages. Apparently Laser are talking to their suppliers! New labels without P38 on them I guess.

Clive

You need https://www.island-4x4.co.uk/front-radius-fitting-tools-p-7647.html
It’s the tool for doing radius bushes,

Chris

So thats the magic taper thingy that compresses the bush to fit the arm. Think I prefer my version, we shall see how well it works in due course.

$64,000 question is whether an aligner widget is needed to set compressing tube dead in line with the bore or whether its perfectly satisfactory to simply push the bush right through by 0.1" or a couple of mm then lightly tap the protruding part in place before finishing the installation.

For proper tool set you still need something to get the bushes out without damaging the bores in the radius arms.

Has that non return valve turned up yet?

Clive

Its just a normal steel cased metalastic bush isnt it? Usually they're no bother in a decent press with the right assortment of pushers etc.

To get them out i usually holesaw out the rubber, and hacksaw thru the bush casings. Then its just an appropriate piece of metal to push them back in.

From my experience with wheel bearings and bushes on the Audi, even if it starts a bit squint, so long as the mandrels all fit decently, the press soon squares it up.

Aragorn

Anything but a normal metal cased bush. Plastic case, probably a nylon of some description. Made oversize to the bore its going into so the whole thing needs to be squidged down by about 3 mm on diameter as it goes in. Case is about 3.5 mm thick so you need at least 2 pushers to do the deed. Just to make life harder 23 mm (ish, depending on how much rubber got moulded round it) diameter centre tube projects around 7 mm each side of the case so simple flat plate won't hack it as a pusher. Need a recess.

Starting squint or pushing on the centre will wreck the bush. Might work, sort of, for a while but it isn't gonna last.

Relying on the bore to pull things straight under umpty four tonne press isn't a good idea. Can get away with it if its only a touch out and the press fit isn't too great. But if it goes wrong it goes really wrong. Think concertina banana cross breed. Lord knows how many tons Bubba put on that one but getting it out and sorting the distorted housing was "interesting" but not in good way.

Clive

I bought the tool that Chris linked to, to be able to do mine.

It presses the old bushes out, and then I pressed the new ones into the reducer sleeve, and then when into that, lined it up with the radius arm bush hole, and pressed it all the way in.

Easy, and didn't take me long to do all 4 bushes on both arms.

yeh fair play if its plastic more care is needed. More stupidity from landrover when designing this car i guess! The older defender/disco arms just used steel cased metalastic bushes.

Continuing the reassembly i spent some hours on it yesterday and today.

Yesterday I stripped the passenger driveshaft and CV right down to component parts, cleaned everything up and reassembled. The boot on that side had been replaced before, and i wasnt convinced whoever had replaced it had cleaned the joint properly. I have a rule to always just replace the whole CV, instead of just refiting a new boot, for numerous reasons... Cleaning up old CV's is horrid, they're almost always worn anyway, and complete CV's arent usually that much more expensive... Ofcourse i ignored my own rule this time for some reason, and regretted it, as there were some pretty heavy signs of wear in the joint. But Oh well. It went back together with its new boot, though i did end up with absolute rage at the fixing bands supplied.

Most of the time, CV boots are supplied with Oetiker style band clamps like this, and as a result i have a set of the proper pliers required to set them:

And thats exactly what was supplied for the small end, as per the pic. However for the large end, they supplied this junk:

Not a clue what its supposed to be and completely useless. Luckily i had a couple spare "universal" types. Unfortunately they were intended to be used with rubber boots, and didnt like applying the clamping force usually needed for the plastic boots, first one i fitted i folded the tangs right back over on themselves with the clamping force... but i fitted them as best i could and hopefully they will stay on.

So with that done i got the new axle oil seals fitted, balljoints torqued and got the shaft and hub reassembled into the knuckle, brakes back on and ABS sensor refitted. So the passenger side is now all complete bar installing the wheel, and tightening the steering balljoints.

So this morning i started the same process on the drivers side... and ofcourse being a P38 it likes to throw curve balls! Removed the shaft from the hub and noticed the hub felt rough. Bearing seems to be completely shafted. Super notchy (feels like a stepper motor, snapping between poles!) and very rough sounding. Oddly enough never heard a peep from it when driving, but clearly i cant refit it like that.

Anyway i've dismantled the shaft and CV from that side, stripped and cleaned the CV and reassembled with fresh grease and a new boot. I guess its sorta stuck now until i get the hub bearing sorted. However after lunch i will go back out and finish tightening the steering balljoints, maybe refit the passenger wheel and see about sorting the nearside ARB droplink.

You use this kind of tool with the band you've photographed.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/8milelake-Joint-Banding-Cutter-Installer/dp/B00VWP5NS6/
I've generally found them to be more hassle than they are worth, the other type are easier to use as you say.

Sounds like an ideal sort of job to do on summer camp. Ahem :)

New bearing arrived today.
I did lots of peering in the automotive crystal ball trying to decide the best course of action.

Island4x4 had an unbranded hub with "timken bearing" for £210.
LRDirect had britpart for £200, "OEM" for £230 or genuine for £600 (ahahaha)

Various places selling bearings for £40-50, or timken bearings for 80ish, but lots of horror stories of getting the bearings out... Theres a big press at work, which i'm sure would have managed, but it would have meant waiting all week to be able to take the hub in on friday to see if the old parts would come out, and having the car sat for another week in an annoyingly awkward posistion on the driveway. I didnt want to order a bearing then find out it didnt want to come apart as then i'm wasting even more time!

However i stumbled across a "Blueprint" brand hub on ebay for £125... Blueprint are part of the bilstein group, and their stuff is generally OK mid range quality that i've used in the past on other cars, so i decided to take a punt on it given it was nearly half price of the other options. Cant be worse than britpart :P

Might see if i can find an hour tonight to get it fitted :)

Well finally got some time on the rangey today.

Driveshaft in, hub on and bolted up, then i realised the ABS sensor wouldnt fit....

Lets just hope those levels of quality control dont extend to the bearing itself :( I marked out where the hole should be, took it all back off and ground it into a slot:

After that things went smoothly enough. Brake disk cleaned up and refitted. Caliper carrier inspected and found a siezed slider. Luckily it freed off in the vice, and i cleaned out the hole and cleaned and regreased the pin and it all went back together nicely. It really needs a pair of front calipers as the dust boots on them are ruined.

Then i set about the drop link. The way they were fitted seems really peculiar and i cant decide which way round they're supposed to be. They were both fitted on the outboard side of the roll bar, which means the upper balljoint sits inside the little cup bit on the chassis. This means you cant easily get a spanner onto the flats to hold the balljoint still while removing it... When i reinstalled it, i put it on the other way. Makes far more sense, means you can get the impact gun in the wheel arch to whizz the nuts on (and off if needed!) and the spanner easily fits on both balljoints.

The one i replaced last year, which i refitted the way it came off:

Then the one i replaced today, which i refitted "backwards", but which seems a much better orientation:

With that lot done, it was back on its wheels. Tightend the axle nuts to 150lbft (thats as high as my torque wrench went) then gave them a "wee bit more" with the breaker bar, as they're supposed to be done up to 200lbft.

And with all of that done, its hopefully ready for its MOT! :)

The cover on hub with abs hole, can be removed and reset if your careful, the fact it was new I think would of made the job easier, it’s lightly pressed onto hub. I always laugh at r/h hubs being dearer in price, must be they set machine up for l/h first, lol