Ok, so another busy weekend. And getting real close to the finish line now.
First of all, I need to make a correction, there is a photo showing the low range gear on the intermediate shaft the wrong way around... I noticed it the other day and fixed it up... that would have been a bit of a problem had I bolted it all together!!!
Anyway, first up. The front diff carrier bearing race was recovered from gearbox 3 and fitted in to the case with locktite.
The diff from gearbox 3 was disassembled, the spider gears had much less backlash than the ones that came out of my gearbox!
Parts cleaned
And reassembled... with lots of locktite (On the bolts, of course)!
The Low range gear was a bit tight on the diff housing so the housing was frozen to make life a little easier. All the holes are eccentric so you can't put it on the wrong way!
The high range gear was fitted along with the front carrier bearing... there is an interesting story behind the high range gear...
Because the stage 1 has a lightly lower ratio high range gearset, I used to find that the engine was revving way too high down the high way with 30" tyres, so a set of brand new 0.996:1 gears were bought. My dad got a land rover guru to come over and swap the gears over in the transfer case.
Anyway, when I was looking at the high range gear that goes on the diff I discovered that it was fitted on backwards!! So now I had a problem... the gears have meshed to each other in this configuration for the last 7 years... If I fit the gear on the right way the gears would certainly howl and that would be horrible to deal with...
So... I fitted the gear back the way it was installed originally (backwards). Obviously this is wrong, but a) it has lasted 7 years so far and copped some abuse and never failed and b) I couldn't handle the howling the gears would produce if I didn't do this... If it has held up for 7 years so far I think it will hold up indefinitely.
Below you can see the misalighment in the gears from this. How the guy didn't notice this when he installed them is beyond me... I guess this is why you should do all your own work huh?
After sliding the diff assembly into the case, we measured the clearance between the casing and the speedo housing. The manual said that this should be equal to the gasket thickness as the gaskets crush x number of mm to give the desired preload on the bearings... on first reading this I though x was the clearance we needed (read it wrong)... it wasn't until after pulling the whole speedo housing apart and removing the bearing race to get to the shim that I had read the manual wrong.
I was really liberal with the locktite on the assembly of this and it was a pain to clean up on disassembly!
After reading the manual again with Wayne we discovered that we were after the clearance of the gasket... which was around 0.025" so I didn't actually have to pull anything apart!... so back together it all went. And finally installed on to the case.
Front output shaft fitted.
And the covers fitted after ensuring the right clearance was achieved on the transfer case selector forks.
So it is practically finished. I just need to fit the diff lock actuator and tighten the bell housing bolts and it is ready for reassembly. The gear lever cover will go on once it is in the car.
... man I hope this gearbox works... taken such a long time to get to this point...