Well, my differential is giving up the ghost. Too much noise, and mech found metal shavings when he looked today. Unfortunately, he doesn't do the rebuilds. But I was a bit surprised to find that it is possible to buy a remanufactured diff assembly from a US shop for less than the cost of the OEM LR rebuild kit.

 

I bought my replacement from freelanderspecialist.com, ebay seller squashedblackgorilla because every rebuild I could find in Canada was expensive as heck and they wanted my core. This seller, at the time, did not request my core and also supplied the seal. Believe it or not, the rebuild landed and with duty and taxes was cheaper from the UK at the time. It's still going, 70+K kms but I change the fluid annually and add Liqui Moly gear additive as well.

I had my core rebuilt with LR parts, it's my backup.

Now, I initially had bought one from the UK from Bell Engineering with their custom bigger bearing in a modified case but he was not able to get it onto a freight plane to me, he said it was because it smelled like gasoline. Anyway, he wasn't happy but he had to refund me. At the time, I never sourced one from the US.

squash

 

Interesting. I wrote to Bell Engineering to see if they can sell me one and take my old one. The price is certainly reasonable.

 

Bell no longer ships overseas...

 

They might use a special solvent as a case and parts cleaner. Dunno, he told me he tried twice to get on a plane, both times the shipment was returned. But I have zero issues dealing with freelanderspecialist.com again. The customer service was impeccable.

 

Hmm. I would pay for someone to receive my old diff, get it to them, pick up the new one and ship it to me. Or it might even be worth taking a trip to the UK with an extra bag and getting it myself. I could use a few days off camping in a pub.

 

Might be able to ship it on an actual ship...

But at that point I'd probably just do the rebuild myself, the kits are available, should just be bearings and seals needed.

 

The instructions in the service manual call for special tools i don't have. I mean, if my very experienced mechanic won't touch that job, there's my sign.

Also, the diffs Bell sells are reengineered with heavy duty bearings.

 

Knowing what I know I would have 100% paid for a Bell unit to get shipped over back in 2012. But my new OEM diff is at 90K and doing fine, hopefully it was an updated version.

But I've seen youtube videos on the rebuild, I don't think it would be that hard, could probably improvise or maybe rent the tools from a volvo shop.

I wouldn't be looking for it to last 200k miles at this point anyway.

 

If it makes you feel better, my original diff lasted 210,000 miles or so.