I think this topic/thread is really great to bring awareness to people about the danger of the prop shaft. Use the red lucas grease, and the #1 thing you must do is make sure you get your shaft blanced after its rebuilt. Don't trust a regular mechanic to balance it because he won't be able to balance it, and if you rebuild it yourself pay the 90.00 to have it balanced by a diff shop. There's obviously different opinions lurking around, but play it safe and do those 2 things and you'll ensure the longest life possible for your shaft.

And before i'm corrected again by the antichrist, I spoke to Andy at the british garage in miramar about prop shafts at length. He says the #1 reason why prop shafts fail is due to them not being balanced. Andy worked for land rover as a master mechanic in England.

As for doing 150,000 miles on your rover. Good job. But why on earth you would attack me over my recommendation of using a grease specifically designed for high temperatures is beyond me. Especially when you at least agree that the heat from the cat is one of the reasons why you have to go under your rover every 5,000 miles.

 

I think your post here is brilliant. I think your knowledge of u-joints and rebuilding is great. I'm not going to say anything more about u-joints or drive-shafts. I'm over it.

 

This is an open forum, and all ideas are welcome. People get testy when their favorite liquid is besmirched. As for temp rating of greases, Lucas makes several, up to 540 F or so. You can buy others, like ttp://www.lowerfriction.com/pdf/14.pdf that extend that even further. But if the drive shaft is getting that hot from the cat, paint won't be doing so well on the floor of the truck, etc. The heat from the cat certainly plays a part in the service life of the grease. Fcatory sealed IMHO is a method to avoid warranty service visits during the all too brief warranty. BMW found out that leased cars were not getting needed service due to $$$, so value of returned lease cars was less, so they rolled service into the lease and adjusted the price. A sealed unservicable bearing is a run-until-failed situation in many cases. We don't have our low frequency spectrum analyzers with base line graphs of bearing noise at install and every X months for our machine components, to predict failure and get the plant manager to schedule some down time. It's cheaper to grease every oil change. The "green" high waterproof grease for agricultural use has some advantage for water resistance, since Rovers like to go swimming. Sealed bearings = throw away part, IMHO, unless service life of said bearings exceeds useful life of machine. And what would the useful life of a Rover be? Let's all find out. We, the unwilling, advised by the unknowing, have done so much for so long with so little that we can maintain anything forever with nothing.

Rant over.

 

I just picked this up on sale at harbor freight for 21$ it has this part perfect for centering ball! Im awaiting my parts to rebuild drive shaft this week :-D

Untitled | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[UPDATE] Dont waste your money on this one from harbor freight... did nothing for me except break... I went down to a local mechanic/gas station close to my house Ive known for awhile and he has a puller perfect to remove center bearing and I came back and finished my drive shaft rebuild... mine wasnt too bad but wasnt good either ... its been about 15 years since I had done a drive shaft rebuild so was fun... the one thing I learned really fast I must have missed from reading was that removing the old ones in the double cardon to tap on that middle part to release the ujoint caps to "shift it down... I struggled with the first one tapping on the actual joint to move it but the secret is keeping them all in same location just shifting the center housing coupler ( for lack of better name of it ) anyway, I figured that out really quickly and from then the only other thing was to leave caps off when installing the ujoint onto the flange part at end.. ... went right together in a snap well tappity tap tap..lol ! here is some before and afters of ujoints.. I fogot to take pics of it fully installed but it looks just like the rest! lol ... also my local gas station shop who also gets allot of the palm beach business deal with land rovers all the time and been a great local source for questions... Ive know the owners son for about 8 years... anyway, he said they have actually drilled and tapped ujoints out right on vehicles and added a grease zert and greased em right up! not sure on land rovers in particular but I thought that was interesting...

Discovery front drive shaft rebuild - a set on Flickr

OLD

NEW

 

I tackled the front driveshaft rebuild yesterday. I had no problem replacing the U-Joints (which were literally made out of rust, glad I am doing this.) However, I cannot find the centering yoke ANYWHERE (replacement purchase I mean). I found P/N 7-0081NG through Advanced Auto, but when I opened the box, the components are already inserted into a bolt on yoke. Does anyone know where to get just the centering yoke bearing, seal and spring?

 

I bought mine last week at RockAuto Auto Parts it was


PRECISION/MOOG 617 Universal Joint Ball Kit $ 22.89 $ 0.00 1 $ 22.89
Shipping First Class Mail $ 2.73
Order Total $ 25.62

and the ujoints I bought locally at British Miami

 

Sounds like they shipped the wrong part.
This is what it looks like (this is one I got at the local Advance Auto):


NAPA, O'Reilly, etc carry the Precision version.

 

While I am awaiting the centering yoke rebuild kit to come in, can I still drive the rover without the front drive shaft without worry?

I know in the pst 4x4's I have owned, this was common practice when I tore out a U-Joint.

 

If you can lock your center diff, no problem, if you can't, it won;t move.