Centre diff diagnosis

Before any of you jump on me for not searching, I have but couldn't find the thread I'm looking for

Ok 85,000 miles on the clock, Auto box. I have a worn front prop shaft at the gearbox end. Now this might be down to lack of grease but I ran for a month with two new tires on the front and worn on the rear so my fault finding paranoia is saying centre diff issue.

I jack up a front wheel, chocked the back, let off the hand brake, put her in neutral, engine off. I would have thought that I should have been able to turn the raised wheel slowly with reasonable force but I had to put a long handled socket on the wheel nut and it took my full weight to get the wheel to turn very slowly.

I checked RAVE for fault diagnosos on the centre diff but there's nothing useful there.

So, anyone know how stiff the centre diff should be?

I bought a new viscous coupling as I couldn't turn a jacked up wheel at all. I put the new viscous coupling in my bench vice and tried turning it with a 2 foot bar. Using a lot effort it took around 45 seconds to turn it through one revolution. I disconnected the front prop and tried it on the one in my RR and the resistance was about the same.

I did read somewhere recently that a quick check is to reverse on full lock with the engine idling. If the VC is hosed there'll be so much wind up in the transmission that the engine will stall. My RR passed this test easily.

edit: added this Land Rover Owner :: View topic - Viscous coupling fault. New Transfer box? ( third post down )

HTH

Bollo,

Thats great info, exactly what I needed to hear. It leaves me with a bit of a dilema though.
I really need the rangie for work and can't get a drive shaft UJ for a couple of days. I was going to take off the shaft to save it and drive around without it assuming that the centre VC was already fooked (I drove my RRC for months, including towing, without a front drive when the shaft failed and nearly came through the floor! It wasn't a problem, the cente VC is now locked up but I only use the RRC off road so its no bother) but if the VC is ok as I now think it is I don't want to mess that up too!
I wonder how the wife's prius would take to a forest track

Hey Bollo,

Just finished put driveshaft back on having replaced the spider . Its not that bad, I've read elsewhere about people having real problems getting the drive nuts off, somebody is even selling a specific driveshaft socket, but I got on fine with deep Halfords 14 and 15mm sockets and open spanners. The nuts are 9/16 but the 15mm socket (they're the new ones supposed to grip on the face of the nut instead of the corners) grips it nicely at a slight angle, makes it a pretty straight forward job.
Anyway, I tried your reversing test and mine runs around on full lock pretty well with no sign of axle wind up even on gravel so I think you're spot on with your info.

Thanks again,

SpudH