While sitting behind the rangey at the weekend i noticed a rusty protrusion on the rear bumper. Closer inspection showed two rusty protrusions which turned out to be hanging out of the access holes underneath, that are there to let you undo the bumper.

I fished about in the hole, and this fell out:

Looked at the other side and sure enough, the same thing was hanging out of the hole on that side too.

Bumper appears to be very loose, so clearly these mountings have failed. But i'm unsure if its just the bumper itself thats rusted out, or if the chassis is knackered... Does anyone know how the bumper attaches and where those rusty nuts are likely to be from?

I would remove the bumper for a look, but the LPG filler is attached to it which makes it a less trivial task.

yeh it stays up fine. The bags all look pretty new and it generally works well.

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! :)

Well i had another go today. Used my garage compressor with a blowgun on the end, removed the line from the top of the dryer, stuffed it into the end of the blowgun and blasted away. It filled the tank in about 30 seconds lol. And ofcourse having the NRV between the dryer and tank means it doesnt all try to escape out the end when i removed the blow gun.

Got the nanocom, opened the valves and up she went :)

I guess either i wasnt giving the compressor long enough, or, more likely, running at 12v it just doesnt have enough grunt.

But the drier is behind NRV1, which i think means while i could fill the tank from there, i couldnt fit a pressure gauge to that position to view tank pressure?

A gauge would have to go in the line actually going to the tank right?

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 :)

I guess it depends what actually fails.

My EAS all works pretty well, but the tank seems to empty itself if its left sitting. The car generally stays up, so its not usually an issue (i guess bar giving the pump a hard time having to refill the tank every time its used), but now and then it will do the EAS dance when parked and lower itself down. I dont want to go down the route of manual valves on all the bags etc. It would just have been handy to be able to see tank pressure with a guage, so i can figure out whats going on, and obviously being able to fill the tank with my big compressor would have helped at the weekend.

I asked a while ago about figuring out the tank leak, but from memory it was suggested it was likely a leaking NRV in the valve block that isnt repairable, so i just left it.

It would just have been kinda useful to get the thing lifted up into offroad mode as i need to sort a drop-link and its sat on axle stands at the front as the axle isnt back together, and the stands dont seem to like me jacking the chassis (they seem to creak and groan if i jack the chassis up)

On the points above, i have a question... AFAIK line 6 goes to the tank? So why would i connect the fill valve to the dryer line instead? I guess i need to get a diagram of the system.

It totally fouled the plugs running with the old MAF. I've reset everything and fitted new plugs, but I don't want to ruin them by running it with no MAF and the fuelling all over the place again. I guess it'll just have to wait.

Not sure if it's a pump issue or just lack of voltage. I have a twin piston tyre inflator that's significantly faster on 14v than 12v, so maybe thats the issue. I'd just leave the pump running but I've no idea if it will actually stop when it gets full...

The pump was replaced shortly before I bought the car and hasn't done much more than about 5k, but it was potentially a britpart unit 😂 it's never given me any troubles in normal use, bar the tank deflating. It usually isn't a problem as the bags hold air and it stays at normal height most of the time.

Yep. Opened inlet and both rears. Valve block clicked for each command but nowt. I even left it sitting for 30 seconds with the compressor running and the valves open just to see if it would lift but it didn't seem to do anything.

Usually when started it will begin rising within a minute or so. Ive seen to go from bump stops to normal height before I turn out the end of the cauldesac...

Is there a way of splicing a shrader valve into the tank line? That way I can use a guage to see pressure and also fill the tank with the airline if needed.?

Hmm didnt seem to work.

The compressor ran, valves clicked, but the car didnt actually lift.

Annoying theres no pressure sensor as i've no idea if the tank was actually filling etc.

Morat wrote:

Have you got a fully charged battery? :)

It was fully charged last week, but i've got a 15A bench supply i'll stick on it while running the compressor. Wont fully cover the compressor load, but will take the worst of it, and it'll just let it refill the battery after.

thanks will have a look in a bit. Trying to sort a drop link and having it sat on the bump stops isnt helping access!

The EAS tank is empty (it leaks out if its been parked) and the car decided to empty its airbags as i shut all the doors with it jacked right up.

The engine wont run as its waiting on a new MAF...

Is there any way i can get EAS to fill the tank and lift itself to normal height without starting the engine? I have nanocom, not sure if i can start the compressor and open the appropriate valves with that?

Britpart has awful quality control. Some bits fit and work fine. Some bits wont even fit at all. Other bits fit and work, but for about 43 seconds, before failing. And ofcourse its luck of the draw where you land on that spectrum.

Wether or not i use a britpart component depends on my perceived likelihood of failure, and difficulty of replacing it if it does fail...

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.

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.

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!

the front radius bushes onto the axle look ok, at least not all torn/ripped etc i guess they could have gone soggy though. I've not checked the chassis end.

They are pretty cheap so maybe i should just do them... Anyone got a spare pair of radius arms i could borrow?

mine didnt wobble, and the MOT man didnt mention any play. But it did wander all over the place and its like an old american movie trying to keep it in a streight line down a back road.

In the last year its had a new steering damper, a new steering column to steering box UJ shaft, both panhard rod bushes and all four steering balljoints replaced. (annoyingly i clipped the boot on one of them with the grinder trying to remove the stupid lower balljoint, so thats going to need done again at some point :()

I really hope these balljoints sort the wandering because its really unpleasant and theres not a great deal left!

I was thinking about just connecting the bosch maf and sagem in series and then driving the car with datalogging on both outputs.

Analysing the data afterwards will give you the voltage for some given airflow for both sensors and you know if bosch says X sagem says Y. Smooth all the points and you end up with a curve.

Even better would be to do the same thing on a test bed/flow bench type arrangement, as doing it on engine makes it more difficult to read every data point

However for that to work you need a known perfect Sagem MAF, and those clearly dont exist else we wouldnt be having this conversation. Hence me thinking that pulling that data from the ECU was the way to go.

Anyway, its all getting away from the point, as currently i need an MOT, and that means i need a working MAF, not a 6 month electronics project :P

Does anyone have a known good Sagem knocking around?