Hi Guys, managed to do the OWT today and its well and trully bolloxxed. Dropped the whole props out completely until I can get it sorted. For your interest it failed to move at the suggested weights etc. Thanks for the advice, Already did a complete rear drum replacement as the were looking like a disco... rusted and shot to hell and the handrake was sticking and all sorts. For now the rear diff and IRD seem ok.... time will tell i guess.

Change the oil in each: that’ll give a good clue as to their condition. If it comes out looking like mercury, you know you have a problem... but fingers crossed you’ve caught it before it became a bigger problem!

Chris@Home said:

Hi Guys, managed to do the OWT today and its well and trully bolloxxed. Dropped the whole props out completely until I can get it sorted. For your interest it failed to move at the suggested weights etc. Thanks for the advice, Already did a complete rear drum replacement as the were looking like a disco... rusted and shot to hell and the handrake was sticking and all sorts. For now the rear diff and IRD seem ok.... time will tell i guess.

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If your up for a bit of work here's how to sort it yourself.
https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/how-to-recondition-a-vcu-yourself.307445/
If not Bells have a good reputation

Good that you took the time to do the test, it has probably saved your car.

You should notify your insurance co that you have modified the vehicle to 2WD to save any nasties should you need to claim for hitting that £100K RR!

Give the IRD an oil change - I do it from underneath with a syringe. There are fill and drain plugs - make sure you can get the fill plug open before you start as they are made of cheese.

I believe the rear diff just has a fill plug, so use a syringe to suck the old stuff out.

As stated if its grey (mercury is a good analogy, just not shiney, more matt) then it is probably pointless replacing the VCU because you'll be asking for trouble. If its grey, you need to consider if you want to replace/rebuild the IRD/diff as well as the VCU. Hopefully it comes out black, but given the state of the VCU, I'm not hopeful

+1 on Bell Engineering being the place to go to.