Baselining My 80 / Overland Build

[Mblinko]

I got my 80 back in July and have been busily collecting parts since then wondering when on earth I would have the time to do all the work. Well now I do and I've got the car here at home in France where I've a bit of space to get on with it and a marquee for it to live in while I do the work. It looks small in the photo but it's actually 8x4 - bags of space. So, the plan is to work every day between now and Christmas and see how far I get.



The car's only had two owners and while it has got the required service history, I plan to replace a lot of parts so that when it comes to our own travels next year I can be confident that little will go wrong while we are away. Here's a couple of pics of many of the parts ...............






I've also got one of these - proper pics later and something else shiny and new arriving tomorrow

Having got the car in and safely jacked up and supported I spent roughly a day disconnecting everything around the back axle before actually taking it out today. Bloody heavy thing with the disks etc still on it, but got it out none the less. I was pleasantly surprised that none of large bolts were difficult to get off.

En-route to the cleaning station, too unwieldy and heavy to put on the trailer, much easier to add wheels and tow


Tomorrows job - strip the hubs, diff lock, clean and prepare axle casing for Fertan and then painting. Got a dodgy diff lock, not too corroded but inoperative right now

 

[stumog]

What cvs and half shafts have you gone for please. Looks like you will be very busy.
Good luck
Stu

 

[Mblinko]

What cvs and half shafts have you gone for please. Looks like you will be very busy.
Good luck
Stu

I got some from these guys ... http://www.lowrangeoffroad.com/

 

[Mblinko]

Cleaned and stripped the axle yesterday, even the collets came out with only a few taps. The oil was quite clear but the nearside wheel bearing had loads of goo in it. Here's the stripped axle ready for some Fertan.



Didn't take too long to put the Fertan on and within half an hour, the whole thing goes black!



Got to leave it now for 24 - 48 hours. So I started to take a close look at the diff lock. Is this a genuine one ?



The reason I ask is because as you can see, either someone has broken it previously or it's a bad casting ............... look at the top right 'hole'. The damage is not new.



I'm also a bit confused as to why I can see the armature through this gap ..............



Is it supposed to be there ?

With a bit of daylight left today, I unwrapped yesterday's delivery ...............



Mmmmm, nice quality too. It'll be a couple or 3 weeks before I get to putting this on though.

 

[froggy Steve]

Wow, lots of intense work going on
Like the bumper BTW - very happy with mine, as you say, good quality too

 

[clivehorridge]

Can't answer the locker questions, I've never looked closely at my rear locker. The front one on mine disintegrated completely and KARL came to the rescue with a replacement, bless him!

Like the bumper too, it will look very smart when you get around to fitting it.

 

[Chris]

No there isn't suppose to be a gap there in the locker motor housing. The damage to the casting is not unusual. Usually as a result of someone either hitting it to free it, or tightening it up when it's not fully seated to try and pull it in. As it's only one corner you could get away with that as long as the thing is working in the first place.

 

[Mblinko]

Wow, lots of intense work going on
Like the bumper BTW - very happy with mine, as you say, good quality too

Yes, it's good, one or two transit dings on the uprights but should be able to straighten them ,

 

[Mblinko]

Can't answer the locker questions, I've never looked closely at my rear locker. The front one on mine disintegrated completely and KARL came to the rescue with a replacement, bless him!

if I can't get this one working, I'll be knocking on Karl's door as well

 

[Mblinko]

No there isn't suppose to be a gap there in the locker motor housing. The damage to the casting is not unusual. Usually as a result of someone either hitting it to free it, or tightening it up when it's not fully seated to try and pull it in. As it's only one corner you could get away with that as long as the thing is working in the first place.

ahh, ok, thanks for the info. I think the gap must have been filled with sealer, so I could repeat that, if as you say if I can get it to work

 

[karl webster]

I have seen many where the casting has rotted. It is a genuine one. I've never seen any no genuine ones to be honest.

Id love to actually make some time and go through an 80 from start to finish. Ill have to ad it to the ((TO DO )) list for when I retire lolol .
Good luck with the work and fingers crossed you get the locker working again

 

[froggy Steve]

Yes, it's good, one or two transit dings on the uprights but should be able to straighten them ,

Thats a shame, mine was fine when it came - mind you, had a lady delivery driver and my BIL was here to help here unload it

 

[iceman]

Great thread - I would love to go over my cruiser with a fine-tooth comb

 

[Mblinko]

Last few days have been about cleaning off rust on the arms, rods, anti roll bar, not terribly interesting work, here they are with fertan on.



Don't know if anyone else has used this product but it took me a day or two to figure out where I recognised the smell from ..... it reminds me of Cognac

Once the fertan is dry, it looks jet black, but then you have to wash it down at which point the non rusty metal appears silver and the rusty bits stay black and there's a black tinge to the water as the powdered converted rust is washed off.

I thought quite long and hard about what I should coat the axle with. Hammerite paint was out on the basis it chips and is, by all accounts, not very good for this type of application. I happened to have 10 litres of black waxoyl which was intended for my Disco so I decided to use it. It's got to be quite liquid to spray it using the hand held pump garden sprayer I have so I put the tin in hot water for an hour and kept it hot until I was ready to transfer it to the sprayer. It goes on super fast and close up, looks nothing like paint, more like a grainy finish and it's important not to over do it. Just enough to cover is the recommendation. This is what it looks like when done.



I'm not planning to coat everything, just the axle, back plates and arms. I'm not a fan of seeing everything covered, only what's needed. Looks a bit smarter IMHO. Just one point, be aware it takes time to be touch dry and more time to be hard enough to resist grasping with your hand. It never truly goes off. Mine has been on for nearly 48 hours and it is just touch dry. I'm not expecting it to be fit to touch to move for a couple of days yet never mind, have lots of other jobs to do

I did get round to knocking out the hub bearing races yesterday and cleaning out. If you haven't done this before, don't be daunted, there are a couple of slots in the castings behind each race especially for a drift. This and simple lump hammer are enough to get them out.



Today's been a day off, so tomorrow's jobs are:

• Fit the new hub bearings, races and seals
• Fit hubs to axle and reassemble handbrake drum with new shoes
• Rebuild calipers with new pins, seals and pads etc.

Well, that's the theory anyway . . . . .

 

[Mblinko]

Thats a shame, mine was fine when it came - mind you, had a lady delivery driver and my BIL was here to help here unload it

Yes, you can just make them out Steve, 1/4 way up on the left one and at the bottom of the right one. Shouldn't be too much effort to bend them back straight though.

 

[Mblinko]

Last few days have been a bit busy. Built up the handbrake with all new parts, cleaning and greasing up all the linkages around the bell crank which were pretty cruddy under the rubber boot.



Replaced the small oil seals which are easy to overlook .....



and fitted up the hubs which now have all new races, bearings and seals and put on the new Toyota discs/drums..........



Then spent an hour making myself the SST to torque the rear hubs ......



Luckily I had a bit of steel, the right size bolts and an old English socket . . . . worked a treat

Then I set about stripping and cleaning the calipers. I was hoping that given there were no leaks anywhere, that I would just get away with new seals, however, I found this ....



... so I've decided to replace them all while everything is in pieces. Went to Biggred who supplied the seal kits originally, so now I have to wait for them to arrive before I can properly finish the axle . All things considered, they came apart quite easily, nothing stuck or seized.

Of course there's still the Diff Lock, which I did today .................... more on that in the next post.

 

[froggy Steve]

doing a fab job there ! keep up the good work

 

[Mblinko]

I spent much of the day today on the Diff Lock having done a fair bit of reading around beforehand. This is a bit of a how to on this, as it combines info from various sources around the internet.

The pictures above are what I started with.

First off, I took the 3 bolts on the cover off to get access to the mechanism. Despite soaking with a releasing agent two of the bolt heads sheared right off with no effort at all . The other came off fine. This is what greeted me underneath the assembly of the 'waiting springs' and 2 gears ........



Not bad condition really, considering the corrosion on the housing.

Next, I took out the 3 screws holding the armature cover on. I applied releasing agent to this as well, but as it was the next day, and following a bit more reading, I decided to heat up each screw with a simple gaz torch. I didn't over do it, maybe 20 to 30 seconds tops as there are wires inside that I didn't want to melt. Then, instead of a cross head screw driver, I just used some water pump pliers to get a good grip and each came undone nicely ..... phew !! So I prised off the cover expecting at least one of the magnets to stay attached to armature. In fact two did ............





There was an awful lot of crud in there. Before going any further, I noted where the magnets were in relation to each other and what way up. Then I put them back in the housing and marked each of them with a number of scratches so I knew which way to put them back. If you look at the below photo you can see where I marked them. This is important as magnets have a polarity, i.e. North and South, and when you put them back in you need to make sure they go back in the same way. I also marked the housing where magnet number one came from.



Having done all this, I took out the loose magnets and in so doing a third came loose and the fourth came out with very little persuasion. No worries, all this is fixable with a bit of glue. This is the mess inside the housing..........



A wire brush and sandpaper cleaned all this up nicely so the magnets could be glued back in place. Scrape the back of the magnets to get the old glue off. Putting them back is simply a matter of mixing up some araldite. Put it on the back of magnet one and on the bottom. Put the magnet in it's original place, you can see the outline of where it was on the housing, and press firmly. Repeat for the remaining magnets making sure the spacing between them is reasonably even. Once done, you have this .............



While the glue was going off, I took a closer look at the armature brushes and they were in pretty good order, so, after cleaning, I used some wire to hold the brushes back so the armature could be put back in .......



Armature with brush contact area cleaned up and thread on shaft greased up.



This is what it looks like from inside the gear housing.....



Next comes the tricky bit, getting it set up right. More of that in the next post.

 

[Mblinko]

doing a fab job there ! keep up the good work

thanks Steve, keeps me out of mischief

 

[AndyCook]

good work there - like the SST !
hope the locker motor works after all the hard work