On the odd occasion our Freelander's have faults. We get a lot of fred's on ere about problems with our Freelander's but very few fred's about how well our Freelander's are doing. To balance this out I have chosen to start a drive shaft appreciation fred. Why yer might ask? When a drive shaft fails it needs replaced. It costs money for the part and money for someone to change it for you, or your time to change it yerself. Annoying it may be. But it's not the end of the world.

Now I can appreciate why peeps get upset when their drive shaft fails. But look on the bright side. It's had a good life and lasted well while driving a significant distance, despite the cold/wind/rain trying to kill it. Our drive shafts happily provide the vital service of turning the road wheels and don't grumble about it unless they fail. The metal shaft is only an inch in diameter yet it turns a wheel about 26 inches in diameter. That’s one hell of a force placed on yer drive shaft to turn such a big wheel. Yer got to give it some respect especially when yer consider it will happily drive yer wheels all day long, not to mention the sudden additional force applied to it at the traffic light grand prix.

Even when a drive shaft does fail look on the bright side. The other 3 are still working happily doing their job. Something I think we Freelanderer's should be more thankful of.

Lovely thread Hippo. I was only chatting to one of my drive shafts the other day. Apparently they don't mind the cold/wind/rain so much, although cold means salt and it stings their eyes a bit - not that they have a great view down there anyway. No, the hard bit of their life is delivering 100 horses and all that geared torque. What really annoys them though are the LR boffins who specify that the hub nuts should be tightened to 400nm - it really hurts.

My driveshafts have had a tough old time in the last 2 years, trying to transfer almost double the amount of power to the road surface that it was intended to

Not once have they grumbled. I thank them for their faithful service

Tyres on the other hand...

I love mine. Especially the two on the car. I'm less keen on the two sitting on a shelf in the garage along with their mate The Rear Diff.

I've just done the maths on how much torque those little drive shafts are taking on my TD4.
The standard TD4 makes 192 FtLb of torque.
First gear ratio is 3.801 to 1
Box final drive is 2.91 to 1
IRD reduction is 1.458 to 1
The the maths is:
192 X 8.801 X 2.91 X 1.458 = 3,096.3469 FtLb.
Divide that by 2 because there are 2 drive shafts sharing the torque in normal circumstances. This gives a potential torque through the drive shafts of 1548.17 FtLb when pulling away in first gear.
Tyre grip will be the limiting factor to how much torque the shaft is actually transmitting. The numbers are large though, so we can't complain when the shaft finally wears out.

With figures like that our drive shafts can retire with their heads held high.

Hippo said:

With figures like that our drive shafts can retire with their heads held high.

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I've just worked out some more torque figures.
The 1.8 is 2348.4 ÷ 2 = 1174.2 FtLb
The V6 is 3038.2 ÷ 2 = 1519.1 FtLb
I've not done the L series but it'll be somewhere between the 1.8 and V6.
The TD4 has the highest standard torque output of any FL1 made.

If yer applied that sort of force to a spanner or ratchet it would snap. But our drive shaft's shrug it oft. All in a days work...

Have I stepped into a parallel universe???????

Alibro said:

Have I stepped into a parallel universe???????

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After 3000 posts you should be used to this.

davidsmith1307 said:

After 3000 posts you should be used to this.

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Oops! Hadn't noticed I'd gone over the 3000 mark.
Guess I talk too much.