Moorhouse2 said:

Happened to have Taylors Series 3 Specification guide (which I'm led to believe is a decent enough reference) on the desk while making a comment on another thread so looked up anything relevant:

By my (quite possibly, flawed) extrapolation from his tables and text and bearing in mind some of the dates don't seem to quite correlate:

Your Engine Number is from Feb 1979 to August 1980 - Taylor refers to quote - "an improved bearing cap seal on the 2.25 diesel introduced in Feb 79 from engine number 906 - 77182C onwards" which dates your number after that and also that the 5 bearing diesel engine introduced in August 1980 had numbers starting with 366 - if yours starts with 906 it must be earlier version.

Gearbox - Taylor refers to quote - " Late in October 1981 the gearbox numbering changed to Suffix D (from C introduced in 1980) when ECM gears were introduced"

Front Axle - apparently the E suffix was used from 1974 and marked the start of use of certain metric threads, right up to 1980 when F was introduced quote - "when 88 and 109 axles were commonized with 11 inch brakes"

Rear Axle - suffix D was used from 1974 through to 1980 when Suffix F was introduced quote - "when rear axles on 88 and 109 models were commonized". Apparently Suffix E was never used for some reason.

So - take what you want from that - everything apart from the gearbox looks like 79 or 80 - the gearbox is probably late 81 so either the axles, engine etc were hanging around for a while before build or a later gearbox was installed at some point?? I'm sure there are better informed folk on here who can explain the idiosyncrasies of LR build processes and timings back in the day!!

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