Date: Wed, 18 Apr 01 16:06:44 -0700
From: TeriAnn Wakeman <twakeman@cruzers.com>
Subject: RE: LRO: Re: special tool
>>whatsa big deal? Do like I did and get thee to the hardware store or yer
>junque pile and get a 12 inch chunk of 1/4 inch square mild steel. That
>and a hammer or rock, and its a done deal. Torque be damned, tighten the
>thing as tight as you can get it.
>Oh, OK. This level of repair seems all too common with series Land Rover
owners. People take REAL pride in NOT doing things correctly. I sure
wish people would quit complaining about how unreliable series Land
Rovers are. It's not the car's fault.
The problem seems to be that Land Rover used a bizzaro nut on the end
of the mainshaft on some vehicles. In a correspondence with someone off-list,
I mentioned that my mainshaft had on it from the factory a regular hex-type nut, and
this is what is illustrated in my Land Rover factory service manual. But
many of you seem to have some sort of castleated thingy that normal
tools won't fit. (is that a word, "castleated?") Anyway, this obviously
explains why I had no trouble with the rear nut, as it's a standard
hex nut size and a normal socket for that size fits on it. I don't know
if Land Rover wised up and decided to put a normal nut on the thing after
such-and-such a year, or if they ran out of the bizzaro nuts and had to resort
to a normal nut on the day they made mine. But on mine, the instructions
simply say tighten down fully and bend two tabs of the washer up against
two sides of the hex nut.
My point is, if the threads on the back end of the output shaft are of a standard
number and pitch (I realize they may not be), why not simply get rid of the stupid
castleated thing an put on a normal nut? Making a washer with tabs to bend up
against two sides of the hex nut should be easy enough, or the stock washer
for the bizzaro nut might work fine with a hex nut. I don't know because one of the
the lock washers that came with my first Fairey overdrive was built to fold up against a hex
nut (so I guess Land Rover must have used hex nuts enough that Fairey realized
they could be in there).
I agree with TeriAnn that using the wrong tool can end up costing you more money
than if you'd gone out and bought or rented the right tool to start with. Or you may not
install something properly, which comes back to bite you later on. But in the case
of this transmission nut issue, I wonder if there's a way to make the problem go
away altogether by simply switching to a nut that doesn't require a special tool
(or a bar and a rock).
___________________________
C. Marin Faure
(original owner)
1973 Land Rover Series III-88
1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
Seattle
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