Outer Limits 4x4 Board

After spending some time under a Disco last week on the side of the road after a day in the Brindabellas, is there an alternative available for the rubber/fabric joint on the rear tailshaft?

The Disco is lifted about 2", and normally runs 235/85 MTRs (with appropriate trimming). It has a rear locker, and gets 'wheeled fairly hard

The rubber flex joint will not last with any suspension lifts but the propshaft can be changed for a conventional RangeRover or later Disco shaft with UJ's on each end. The pinion flange must also be swapped for a regular 4 bolt fine spline one.
Bill.

I had mine on my disco changed since I was damaging the joint every month I ended up using BMW cheaper after parts since they were lasting as much as the Land Rovers.
I ended up using the older RR ones as Bill is saying however i fitted the 4.11 CR&P which took care of the pinion flange to fit as bolt on.

Highly advise you do it or just keep a spare with you and you should be fine especially if you are looking to change your R&P for bigger tyre and better crawl ratio.

Take care
Jay

I'm not sure what others are doing, but my Sunday driving seemed to be increasingly destroying the rubber tailshaft coupling in the rear of the Disco also. It seems to be susceptable to high energy jolt forces, especially with oversized bog tyres. The failed rotoflex looks like the one below instead of its usual regular shape

This one was done with some boot in low range whilst airborne.
The following are the parts required from a donor Landy, this one being from the rear of an early Discovery. Note that the 24 spline flange and spacer is required to do the conversion, as some early Landies had the 10 spline pinions.

Once the original tailshaft is out, you should be left with the 3 bolt pinion flange and centralising peg left to remove off the pinion. These will all be coming off. The flange may appear to be one piece, though the centre must be removed with sheer force to release the bolt on the end of the pinion.

A photo essay of my brutal efforts at removing the centralising peg from the pinion flange:

... and now the little bugger is out after an angle grinder massage!

The pinion nut is done up FT, which I guess means fairly tight, enough to feel a socket, breaker bar and extension flex. A rattle gun makes light work of it though.

With the end of the pinion sticking out, the replacement spacer is dropped in, never to be seen again.

Interestingly, when the developed the pinion flanges they changed from manufacturing this as a 2 piece set (flange + spacer) to a single unit.

From here, the pinion flange goes on the pinion after the spacer, the pinion bolt goes back and is rattled tight with a bit of loctite to prevent loosening. The replacement CV->CV tailshaft then gets installed and the bolts tightened up.


Something I have just found out, is that the CV flanges can come in differing bolt patterns. Check that your parts will fit, and its probably a best bet to make sure it comes off a truck with an LT230 transfer (if thats what you started with!) Another thing is that 4.11's come with a big mumma nut on the end of the pinion. The OE tailshafts with a touch of the grinder will clear this, but a few of the aftermarket ones wont, and will need machining to suit, and possible the pinion nut some grinding.

Full pics at:
Tailshaft conversion

Another great tech article from Slunnie!
Good work!

With the amount of later model Disco's wheeling now there must be a lot more conversions like this.
Good for the FAQ?

It was no effort really. I'm in a group of online D2 owners, and there isn't a lot of tech writeups, so I do all of this and jus post it up so others can do it without the associated risk and cognitive melt down. I wrote this one up about a year ago. It'd be good to see some more D2 owners on here being irresponsible though.

Don't worry, there's plenty of irresponsible D1 owners to make up for it!

The flex joint also fail quicker if they are put on wrong. There are arrows that must point to the bolts.

Bazzle

pinion flange bolts or the tailshaft flange bolts?