This is an axle from a Discovery 200tdi. The original axle casing had been bodged with badly welded radius arm brackets. I took the opportunity to upgrade to disc brakes.
The Discovery axle uses one piece half shafts with integral drive flanges. The Defender had loose flanges.
The stub axles are slightly different. They have a flat rather than a keyway to locate the thrust washer and lock tab washer.
The stripped axle casing. I left the stub axles on as they were fine.
I had bought some cranked rear arms from eBay, but I wasn't impressed with the welding. So I had them rewelded at a local fabrication shop.
Poly bushes being installed in the radius arms. These are the Polybush 'comfort' type and were supplied by Famous Four (www.famousfour.co.uk).
Here is a new TerraFirma spring next to the original.
And the Rough Country dampers compared to the standard ones.
This is the new ball joint installed. It took over 25 tonnes to press the old one out at a local garage! The new one pressed in easily with my 10 tonne press.
The axle casing painted. It was pretty scabby and is probably getting a bit thin in places, but it had to be used. I couldn't justify buying yet another one at this stage!
The rear hubs were cleaned and painted.
Not a good picture, but shows the special tool we made to press in bearing races easily.
Bearings, seals ans disc assembled. The discs were in good condition and were reused.
Here's the reconditioned rear diff, with the ARB air locker assembled. The diff was built by Steve at Crown Differentials (www.crowndiffs.co.uk).
Unfortunately, when I came to fit it, the drive flange was found to be bent. It had obviously been dropped by the carriers on it's way to me. A replacement was ordered from Crown Diffs and it arrived the following day.
This is an early Discovery axle and uses the double nut arrangement for the hubs. The tab washer in knocked down over the inner nut and up over the outer nut.
Here's the axle with the hubs assembled. I've left the disc shields off both axles. They just get full of mud and stones!
The calipers had new seals and pistons fitted. More detail can be found in the front axle section where the same was carried out on the front calipers.
Here the calipers have been painted and fitted to the axle. The QT diff guard has also been fitted.
After installing the rear axle, the top bracket of the QT diff guard fould the A frame arm. This was corrected easily by cutting the bracket away a little.
The TerraFirma rear springs are dual rate so the lower coils are closer together. This meant that the Paddock Spares heavy duty retainers barely fitted between the coils.
I couldn't fit the springs up the other way because the hook type relocation 'cones' from Llama4x4 wouldn't hook the close coils.
The solution was to grind away some of the retainers to make them tapered. Not ideal, but a lot better.
As it happened, the Rough Country dampers chosen only let the springs about 2" off their seats, so the hook type relocators are not necessary. However, they allow the use of longer dampers in the future for more rebound travel.
Here, the brake pipes have been made and fitted. You can also see the cut away diff guard bracket to clear the A frame.