15/06/2016

Diff Nose Leak Fix

One of the reasons I've been avoiding taking the PI estate any great distances, is because the diff has been leaking quite badly from the front seal. As someone who's destroyed 2 different diffs over the years in the 2000 and TR6 by forgetting to keep them topped up during long trips, I didn't want to kill another. 

The PI has a good one, quiet with minimal play, so I want to keep it that way. 

First task, get the rear end up in the air and disconnect the driveshafts. 


Then remove the rear exhaust, disconnect prop, undo all the diff mounting bolts, haul it over the subframe arms and pull it out from under the car. 


I'd bought a strengthened nose-piece from eBay 11 years ago, that had been fitted with a new bearing, but never used it, so now seemed a good enough reason to remove it from its box and put it to use. 

The photos get rather sparse now, but  the order of events were as follows. 

- Remove old nose piece and drain oil. 
- Drift out old leather lipped seal. 
- Tap in new leather seal, after soaking in gearbox oil for 24hrs. 
- Fit new nose piece.  
- Swap over propshaft flange as the one supplied with the nosepiece was a Stag one and the PCD is different. 
- Fill diff with oil.


Refit diff, with new Superflex bushes, stainless washers and nuts from Chris Witor, as the old rubber ones were well past their best. 

While the diff was out I also took the chance to re-grease the sliding splines on the driveshafts. 

Checked the oil level once the car was back on the ground, then went for a quick test drive. All seems ok, but will keep an eye open for those tell tale puddles of EP90.