I noticed that my driver's side swivel ball has a pretty decent leak on it a while back and now that I have a little money I want to fix it. Atlantic British has a rebuild kit with a bunch of gaskets and stuff, but to be honest I have no idea what's going inside there. How hard will the rebuild be? Does the RAVE CD have the procedure in it?

http://www.roverparts.com/Parts/STC3321.cfm is the kit I was talking about, and I'd also pick up some of the swivel ball grease, a new hub bearing since I think mine failed, and some gear lube just because it probably needs to be done.

 

Dont rebuild it, just grease it.
They came from the factory with gear lube in them, then they switched to a gear lube/grease mix, all they need is grease.
Take your grease gun and twice a year pump in grease, 20 pumps each side, they wont leak anymore and will still last forever.
It may leak until all the gear lube leaks out but the grease will keep it lubed.
The seal is worn and that is all that needs to be replaced, but why if you can stop the leak?
I do this to my truck, every spring and winter, I do it during a oil change so i already have the grease gun out.
Use the same grease that you use on your u-joints.

 

Mitch, My concer is if the ball is pitted, the seal kit will be useless, you would need to buy a replacement ball.
As SApike has mentioned, replace the gear oil with Rovers new swivel grease which if it leaks, will be a lot less.

 

Yeah I had planned on doing that while I was in there so I guess I'll start with just that. Thanks guys

 

I wouldn't spend the money on the kit unless you're also going to do the swivel pins. Depending on the mileage on yours, you'll be getting the death wobble soon (if you haven't already). If you're going to completely remove the swivel ball to renew the seal you might as do the whole nine yards.

If the truck has always lived in the north east, your swivel ***** are indeed likely pitted. Two choices there, replace with new (or good used), or use epoxy to repair them, which a lot of people have done with good success.

If you just renew the grease in them, use the proper grease, not chassis lube.

 

Well I guess I'm gonna have to wait for some money to come in and I'll decide then if I can afford to do it all. I want to do a pretty full restore on the truck since my dad took poor care of it for a good 6 years, so I'm gonna end up doing all this stuff anyway, it's just a matter of how fast I can get money in. Thanks for that advice though, I think I pretty much have this planned out right.

 

I'd still put grease into it. Even if you have to buy the grease gun, it'll be cheap, plus you should be greasing all the joints you can anyway. If you go without lubrication, you might be in for a more expensive fix sooner than you'd otherwise want.

 

X2 on what Jawbox said. Try the grease first. And as already stated, don't use chassis lube. It takes a little more than general purpose grease. I use a mixture of RP wheel bearing grease and 85W140. The Rover mixture is readily available online.

 

After reading this I believe with some certaintly this is my problem on a 98 disco with 139,000 miles , please if you have a detailed web site for this reair i really need it , theres no way i can afford to have a rover dealer do it besides the nearest 1 in 150 miles away

 

Download the rave cd if you don't already have it. I don't know if this is in there but I would be willing to bet that it is.