davidsmith1307 said:

I know how you feel. I'm lucky if I get a half hour.
I'll be glad if my car is running before I'm too bloody old and senile to drive it. Though, to be fair, I must be half way senile to be doing it in the first place!

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LOL, Tell me about it, I just spent a couple of hours changing track rod ends on Gertrude and the stupid thing is still rattling, I guess the wishbone will be next to try and sort it.

OK, the big job has begun!
Last Saturday my mate called round and we finished working on daughters Fiesta so it is reasonably presentable again. The bumper is repaired (ish) and the plastic parts are back on well enough. The car is 03 and not worth much and it will be sold shortly so I don't think it will be worth much more by making it perfect.
Anyway after working on the Fiesta we pulled the propshaft off the Freelander. I know it doesn't need to come off completely to replace the clutch but the VCU was seeping a little and I wanted to have another go at welding it up, I also intend to repair the fuel tank support the same way I did for Gertrude so it needed to come off.
So on Saturday the undertray came off and the propshaft but not much else.
Tonight I got stuck in and did the following
Jacked up the front and put it on axle stands
Removed both front wheels and both plastic side guards.
Removed the battery and battery tray. A pig of a job as the bolt securing the battery just turned without loosening so I spent at least 30 minutes drilling and grinding it out.
Drained coolant from the bottom rad hose
Disconnected the two coolant hoses to the IRD. (A pig of a job which found me sitting on the engine reaching down and struggling to get the hoses off. I had to push a thin screwdriver in the end of the rubber hoses and wiggle it around to break the seal.
Here's a photo of them disconnected.
Once that was done and I mopped up the mess on the garage floor I then started removing the bits which secure the IRD.
First I removed the bolts holding the lower tie rod, then the bracket which goes round the offside drive shaft. It is not the first time I've done this as I had to do it when removing the sump to replace the oil rail. But it is still a pig of a job.
Here are the bits removed.


After that I removed the damper from the VCU (it sits above the propshaft) and that was about it for the night. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll get the IRD out, I know I don't need to remove it completely to replace the clutch but it is seeping oil so I want to replace all the oil seals. IRD oil has a very distinctive eggy odour so is easy to spot and the lower half of the IRD is covered in oil.

LUKBENPHI suggested I allocate a day and a half for this job. Mmmm, I suspect a week and a half will be more like it for me, I'm a bit slow at this kind of thing, and I always end up doing other stuff at the same time, but I have the luxury of a spare car at the minute so I might as well take my time, enjoy it and do it right.

Alibro said:

OK, the big job has begun!
Last Saturday my mate called round and we finished working on daughters Fiesta so it is reasonably presentable again. The bumper is repaired (ish) and the plastic parts are back on well enough. The car is 03 and not worth much and it will be sold shortly so I don't think it will be worth much more by making it perfect.
Anyway after working on the Fiesta we pulled the propshaft off the Freelander. I know it doesn't need to come off completely to replace the clutch but the VCU was seeping a little and I wanted to have another go at welding it up, I also intend to repair the fuel tank support the same way I did for Gertrude so it needed to come off.
So on Saturday the undertray came off and the propshaft but not much else.
Tonight I got stuck in and did the following
Jacked up the front and put it on axle stands
Removed both front wheels and both plastic side guards.
Removed the battery and battery tray. A pig of a job as the bolt securing the battery just turned without loosening so I spent at least 30 minutes drilling and grinding it out.
Drained coolant from the bottom rad hose
Disconnected the two coolant hoses to the IRD. (A pig of a job which found me sitting on the engine reaching down and struggling to get the hoses off. I had to push a thin screwdriver in the end of the rubber hoses and wiggle it around to break the seal.
Here's a photo of them disconnected.

Once that was done and I mopped up the mess on the garage floor I then started removing the bits which secure the IRD.
First I removed the bolts holding the lower tie rod, then the bracket which goes round the offside drive shaft. It is not the first time I've done this as I had to do it when removing the sump to replace the oil rail. But it is still a pig of a job.
Here are the bits removed.

After that I removed the damper from the VCU (it sits above the propshaft) and that was about it for the night. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll get the IRD out, I know I don't need to remove it completely to replace the clutch but it is seeping oil so I want to replace all the oil seals. IRD oil has a very distinctive eggy odour so is easy to spot and the lower half of the IRD is covered in oil.

LUKBENPHI suggested I allocate a day and a half for this job. Mmmm, I suspect a week and a half will be more like it for me, I'm a bit slow at this kind of thing, and I always end up doing other stuff at the same time, but I have the luxury of a spare car at the minute so I might as well take my time, enjoy it and do it right.

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Good start there and to be fair i'm the same, always something else that needs sorting on the way, day and half advise was when i was working on my own on the drive flat out with hand tools on the drive. make sure you take photos as it will help remember where things go if your doing it over a longer period and it will look good in the thread , and I apologies, i forgot about having to disconnect the IRD cooler in my quick description!

I see you have a polyurethane tie bar bush fitted Alibro. I'm just about to order one for my TD4 SE. Hopefully it won't vibrate to much, being a diesel.

Nodge68 said:

I see you have a polyurethane tie bar bush fitted Alibro. I'm just about to order one for my TD4 SE. Hopefully it won't vibrate to much, being a diesel.

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I get an loud unpleasant buzzing at around 4000-5000rpm. I get it on the other Freelander too but not as bad so TBH if I were doing it again I would go OEM. There is a thread here where someone cut bits out of a poly bush but I didn't like to.
Having said that I went poly top and bottom so not sure how much difference that makes.

Alibro said:

I get an loud unpleasant buzzing at around 4000-5000rpm. I get it on the other Freelander too but not as bad so TBH if I were doing it again I would go OEM. There is a thread here where someone cut bits out of a poly bush but I didn't like to.
Having said that I went poly top and bottom so not sure how much difference that makes.

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I posted the image of the modified poly bush
I've only use them on the V6 Freelander which doesn't actually vibrate with them. However the 4 pot vibrates on other MG/ Rover vehicles, so the Freelander is likely to vibrate too. The vibration is the reason for the modification in the first place The factory bush is soft which is good for vibration insulation, but not power unit stability. Ideally a halfway house bush is needed for the 4 cylinder engines. I'm tempted to look for an improved rubber version for my TD4.

Nothing done tonight.
Spent the night buying daughter another car, no not a dodgem. She wanted a Golf but we struggled to find a good three door (very important) with lowish mileage for sensible money. Then by accident we saw an Audi A3 on gumtree, not too dear so started looking for A3's and found a couple much better value than equivalent Golf. Picked it up tonight and daughter very happy.

A3's are cheaper than an equivalent Golf. Odd really as they are a Golf, only better looking and better made. Good luck with the new purchase

Nodge68 said:

A3's are cheaper than an equivalent Golf. Odd really as they are a Golf, only better looking and better made. Good luck with the new purchase

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Cheers thanks, took me by surprise, especially as they are no more to tax or insure. I know they are well built as I stripped one last year and it was really solid.

Made a bit more progress this evening,
Removed both wishbones
Unclipped CV boot from RHS drive shaft then realised I was being a numpty and put it back on
Levered RHS drive shaft out of IRD
Pulled breather pipe off IRD
Removed 2 bolts at top of IRD and 2 on bottom of it. A bit of a pig but managed it with a breaker bar.
Unbolted lower cross member and let it hang down on the droplinks
Used engine hoist to support IRD while doing the above then lowered it to the ground
This is what I am left with


I know much of this stuff doesn't need to come out for a clutch change but I figured I might as well do some other stuff while I'm at it so I have ordered a VCU oil seal kit as mine has a leak, new wishbones and new drop links as they are well past their best and are easy to change now.
Tomorrow I plan to remove the droplinks and get the crossmember out of the way then lever out the LHS prop shaft and then unbolt the gearbox. Hopefully it should be straight forward from there

Im doing clutch on my Td4 at the moment. It's much quicker putting it all back. Clutch and gearbox fitted this morning. Gearbox mount secure. See how far I get today with it.

Ok a quick update, First sorry only got a couple of photo's today as too busy doing the job. Here are a couple of bits which arrived yesterday.
Some gearbox and IRD oil.


Oil seals for the IRD. I bought these because I thought the IRD was leaking, it stank pretty bad of transmission fluid and I don't think it was coming from the gearbox. Anyway I bought these thinking I would be able to use them but turns out the only one I used was bottom left. It is the drive shaft seal and it wasn't leaking anyway. I could use the other ones but I didn't realise they are for a shaft inside and I don't fancy stripping the IRD down to fit them, so money wasted.

First thing we did (my mate called and gave me a hand) was unbolt the drop links as I have two new ones in the post. This allowed the cross member to drop off and it got shoved out of the way.
Next we removed the starter motor, we didn't realise it is held on with bolts and nuts so we started unscrewing them and couldn't understand why they wouldn't loosen.
That done we removed the clutch slave from it's bracket.
Then disconnected the reverse and 1st gear switches. One of them unplugs easily by squeezing a wire catch and the other has connectors half way up the cable which separate.
Then we removed the gear linkage roll pin (a pig of a job but once I got it moving it came all right) and bracket. The roll pin is hidden under a spring clip.
Then removed all but one of the bell housing bolts. and loosened the NS engine/gearbox mount bolts, there are two cover plates either side of the bell housing (upper) which will probably fall off.
Once ready we put a strap around the gearbox and took it's weight with the engine hoist, it was then easy to take out the remainder of the bolts, lever the gearbox from the engine with a crowbar and lower it to the ground.
We then took the gearbox off to the side and started working on it but after about 15 minutes my mate looked in the engine bay and asked "Is the engine OK hanging from one mount?" I took one look, saw it had sagged down a lot and suddenly realised the answer was NO! We got the hoist back in as quick as possible and hoisted it back up, then tied it up to the rafters, hopefully no harm done.
Once the Engine was supported we hunted for something to use as an alignment tool to hold the friction plate and found a long 15mm (I think, it may have been 17mm) socket was pretty close so a couple of turns of masking tape got it a nice fit so we started removing the pressure plate. We had to hold the engine with a socket on the crank pulley but it came off easy enough and it didn't take long to refit the new friction and pressure plate. The flywheel wasn't perfect but not too bad so we just cleaned it up and went ahead.

Didn't get anything done last night as not home until after eight and tonight wasn't home until 7 but went out for a couple of hours. I got the engine tie rod brackets bolted back on and was about to start fitting my new wishbones and drop links when my son appeared and asked was I going to test the clutch before going any further. This makes sense but I then got distracted by the rust on the chassis cross member supports.

This is what they looked like.


And after chipping at them with a screwdriver. It is the other side but they were both the same.


After going at it with a wire brush on the grinder. I cleaned it up a bit more than this before moving on.


Rust treatment.


Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get them painted before bolting the cross member back on.

I forgot to mention earlier the clutch friction plate was a mess when we took it off. It has weird marks and scratches on both sides of it.





As you can see from the third photo it is not badly worn so I think this is confirmation it was replaced before like I suspected, probably with a cheap one as no manufactures marking. However the thrust bearing looks pretty well knackered so I'm wondering was it such a cowboy job they only replaced the friction plate? I guess that would account for the issues we experienced.

I hope you lubricated the release bearing slide tube and the release fork assembly? Lack of proper lubrication is the cause of judder on the PG1 gearbox.

Nodge68 said:

I hope you lubricated the release bearing slide tube and the release fork assembly? Lack of proper lubrication is the cause of judder on the PG1 gearbox.

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Yes all lubed up.

Alibro said:

Yes all lubed up.

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Good stuff.
You can clearly see the dust at each end of the damper springs caused by the judder.
Over the years,I've had to correct many so called " fast fit clutch specialists" duff work on the PG1 box. Mostly caused by a complete lack of lubrication in the correct places. We lubed all contact points with moly grease to prevent judder. It's so important on this design,that is often overlooked, even in the factory too.

It looked like it had been greased with copper grease when I opened it but the thrust bearing was knackered. I'll have to get a photo of it up. I used the grease supplied by borg and beck, the manufacturer of the new clutch so hoping all sorted now.
I'm doing a few other bits and pieces while the crossmember is off so the test will have to wait a bit longer.

Alibro said:

It looked like it had been greased with copper grease when I opened it but the thrust bearing was knackered. I'll have to get a photo of it up. I used the grease supplied by borg and beck, the manufacturer of the new clutch so hoping all sorted now.
I'm doing a few other bits and pieces while the crossmember is off so the test will have to wait a bit longer.

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What's that blue rust treatment you're using? Seems like one job has turned into many for you, just like the rest of us!

guineafowl21 said:

What's that blue rust treatment you're using? Seems like one job has turned into many for you, just like the rest of us!

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LOL, too true. It is hammerite rust treatment. I can't remember what the chemical is but I think it is commonly used to react with rust and turns it back into metal.
Painted the rusty bits tonight.