I have managed to pick up the dry powder coated parts from MCS and they look great. The Inlet manifold looks the picture but when I ran a finger on the inside it was still fill of residual shot blast grit, I gave it a good flushing out with the hose pipe. But I still wasn’t happy so I got a bottle brush and with the hosepipe flushed and scrubbed any residual grit out. I let it dry in the sun whilst I carefully degreased the injector assembly and the air intake and breather pipes that balance the air pressure throughout the engine. But both these are parts are mounted under the inlet manifold. Whilst they dried off in the sun I made a start on cleaning other pieces.
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| before treatment |
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| After treatment |
I started cleaning a few parts to be used in the engine bay, such as the radiator top brackets. Then it was on to the big job de-rusting the hubs. So far I haven’t needed to remove the hubs from the drive shafts because I haven’t been able to get the fastening nuts off. Graham’s recommendation from MSC was to take a wire brush to them and paint. So I’m fully expecting it will be a long job. I started chipping the rust away and then took the wire brush to the front hubs. After I had made sure I had got every face of the front hubs I went on to the rear hubs. I lifted the diff with the hubs out into the sunshine and went to work on one of the hubs turning it over and over, back and fourth until it was getting near ready for a wash down and paint when I looked up and saw the shaft had come out of the diff altogether. Now that in itself wasn’t the problem the problem was the two pieces of broken spring that were on the end of the shaft. Oh bugger!
I looked inside the diff and found a few more pieces. I managed to pull out a couple of pieces but lost one behind the oil seal. Double bugger! I had enough for the day. Kim had called she has been bed ridden with back problems and, literally, had not been out of the house for nearly two weeks. I went round for a chat and to help her sort some stuff out. On the way home I popped in to Halfords on the way home and picked up a tube of gasket seal. I took the back of the Diff off the unit. I turned it on end to let the last of the oil to drain out. I inspected the oil there was nothing in it so I reached in and found a tiny piece of metal but nothing like the size of the piece that fell earlier. I got a magnet on an extending arm and used it to try and pick up any debris toward the nose of the diff, but didn’t find anything. So I used the magnet in the oil seal and found another big piece of spring. Further digging revealed another couple of pieces.
So where did the spring come from? The differential was overhauled last year. I went back to the books - the service manual in particular. After an hour or so of searching and reading I have come to the conclusion that the spring is part of the circlip which holds the drive shaft in the differential. It looks like you compress the circlip when you insert the spline shaft into the diff and it spring into place once the shaft is in the right position. It recommends replacing the circlip with a new one when inserting. I’m guessing the guys up in Newcastle didn’t do a proper job on the rebuild. I’ll have to search for a clip online this week.
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