When I was removing the bolts from the swivel housing to the axle stub,
there was 2 missing! I couldn't get a clear view until the swivel
housing was totally removed and then I saw that the previous owner had
actually snapped off the bolt heads and left the bolts in the axle. - In the
picture you can see them at positions 12 and 1 o'clock- How dumb can a
licence mechanic be? Just the thought of the lack of swivel housing
security, scares me. Just think about it, if I had an accident on the right
corner of the vehicle, the front tire - with enough force - could have been
forced off of the axle into the bulkhead where my feet are. Scary isn't it!
Then I had the new task of thinking of how to
remove these rusted in bolt remains. E-z-outs were of no help, actually I
broke two off into the bolts further compounding my problems. Drilling out
the e-z-outs was useless! I needed something that was hard enough to
remove everything. I knew what I needed, a special drill bit that is
designed to cut hardened steel. As luck would have it, they are not available
here in Nybro. Patience would become a neccessity !
So in the mean time trying to solve that problem,
I moved on to the steering. What a mess! When I would turn the
steering wheel, I could hear a scrapping noise and sometimes a roughness
could be felt in the steering. But there was a new upper steering column
bearing. I decided to remove the bearing and take a closer look. Once again,
to my disbelief, the original bearing was never removed, it was pushed down
the steering tub. This old and severely damaged bearing just simply fell to
pieces in the column, sending bits and pieces down the steering tub into the
steering box. If you look at the picture, you can see half ways down and at
the bottom of the inner shaft, the score marks caused by the larger pieces
of the bearing. I then opened the steering box, checking for damage and I
found several small pieces of the bearing outer casing plus 3 of the 3mm
bearing balls! the whole steering box assembly was just garbage and it went
directly there! A replacement unit was bought and installed.
I bought a complete set of tie rod ends for RUR 487 from Paddocks and I was
not too pleased with the quality of the products nor the set. For one thing,
there was 3 of each thread direction, but you need 4 right hand thread and 2
left hand thread for the series 3 steering. The the tie rod ends
themselves, Bearmach shit!
Poorly built units, the grease nipples were falling off, slight tears in the
rubber seals and only one wire ring around the rubber seals to hold them in
place and keep out the road grime. - These will be replaced at a later time
with original units-
Four months later I finally found a dealer that had the drill bits that I needed, so I bought 2 and went to work on the right side of the front axle. Damn it took a long time with the drill, nearly 2 days but I did remove the old bolts. The threads were damaged from the drilling, so I decided to instead use nut and bolt to secure the swivel housing - just as the series axles - at these two positions. I did use quality steel 8.8 nuts and bolts.
Finally the front axle was back together again. In the swivel housing, I decided to use Land Rovers own one shot grease - I highly recommend using it - no more leaking swivel housing.
