Saturday 18 September 2010

3.54:1

I spent a good chunk of this afternoon dismembering a 110 back axle for the the differential.




It would have taken about 10 minutes, had the pinion nut not been so tight I failed to shift it with a decent 3/4" drive socket and bar. Eventually, I lost patience, and split the nut with a hammer and chisel (handy skill to develop, this is the second time in as many weeks I've managed to do this to seized nuts without wrecking the thread the nut is on). After that, I could take the main diff unit out, followed by the input shaft and pinion... not forgetting its crush spacer.

I tend dropped the prop from Bitsa, to find not only could I undo the nut, but it had come lose, and the diff input bearings had loads of play in them... as it was getting dark, I decided against fitting the new diff until tomorrow, and just tightened the nut back up. Driving home from the farm, the howl on over-run that I had assumed was a knackered prop has much diminished.

You are meant to go to lots of trouble setting the diff up in a "new" case, but having talked to others it seems that in practice it you swap all the bits as a set, it will be fine.

Hopefully she will be much nicer on the motorway on 3.54's, although I suspect the peaks will prove a bit painful until I sort out the turbocharger.

In other news, I now own loads of 9.00x16 bargips, (4 medium worn ones for sale cheap if anyone wants them, I've ended up with 9 in total), and am now sorting out getting hold of a set of rims to fit them to. The super tall Bitsa looms... no more getting stuck descending Chapelgate step.

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