Series 2 Broke the rear diff in 5 door 109

My brother was backing up to a loading dock in his 109 station wagon to pick up his new exercise treadmill when he accidentally backed into a concrete barrier. Put a pretty big dent in his left rear bumper but the worst thing is he shattered his diff. Spider gear lying at the bottom and ring gear out of position. As a consequence of gears being out of position we have not been able to pull the diff out of the axle tube. Given up on it for today. This was supposed to be his winter car but looks like we will have to put the 2nd P38 on the road.

Photos please?

Does the range rover have reversing sensors?

Have you had the half shaft's out? I once mashed an axle bad enough that one shaft could not be pulled, even when one end was chained to a stanchion and the shaft to a tractor. I ended up replacing the whole axle. Later I cut it open just to see. The shaft had a twist in it like one of them old type candy sticks and the inner end had welded itself into the diff gear.

No backup sensors on a 1960 Land Rover.
We wouldn't be trying to pull out the diff without removing the axle shafts. Splines on the shafts are fine. It would have been nice if an axle had broken rather than blow up the diff.

Which axle do you have? Probably a Salisbury but sometimes a Rover, and now and then an ENV turns up.

Sixties, probably a rover diff.

Rover diff comes out at the front Salisbury at the rear of the casing.

tottot said:

Rover diff comes out at the front Salisbury at the rear of the casing.

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no upd@te from the op, hes been on the forum tod@y though.

Yes, if he has a Salisbury he may not know the removal method.

I had to look it up to confirm it is a Rover diff. Not sure if my brother is going to try and fix it during winter. If he didn't have the second P38 to drive he might as he doesn't like to drive his Mercedes in winter unless roads are dry. Just pulled the rear driveshaft out of the P38 as there was a vibration at the rear. Discovered someone had not fully seated the circlip on one end so there was side to side play. Put in a new U joint just to be sure its good. Need to test drive it a bit more to see if anything else needs attention. We only bought this recently and have not driven it much as the engine had a misfire on cylinder 7. New fuel injector or coil packs fixed that. Did both so not sure which did the fix.

With the pinion gear/spider gear broken off I can see getting a Rover diff out will be difficult. Possible answer would be to free axle from the springs and rotate axle until diff points to the ground. Some whacking around could move the bitts to a position where with the assistance gravity the whole lot drops out.

Might be easier to just replace the whole axle. First we need to figure out what gear ratio we have. Does anyone have a table of gear ratios used in these older cars? We can figure it out to some extent by rotating a front wheel and counting drive shaft revolutions. Knowing available ratios would help.

4.7:1

Unless changed for coil spring diffs at some stage.

Well my brother got it out. 4.7 it is.
Spider carrier completely shattered. Could maybe still use the main housing but pretty much everything else needs replacing.

I have some photos but get an error message when trying to upload them:
"You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action."

Yes. The forum isn't playing nice. Get in touch with Mike at Britannia restorations, he might have a diff. Then weld in a 9 inch pipe cap to the casing. As long as you have a filler plug somewhere you should be fine.

Well Mike is about 2,000 miles away so will first try to find one locally.
Don't understand what you are getting at with the pipe cap?

If a tidy Salisbury axle [ the whole thing ] as fitted to later models comes your way it may be worth considering, Stronger than the Rover unit. Its prop also needed.
Also no idea about "pipe cap".

A Salisbury would be nice if we could get a proper fit. Our axles have 11 splines so I'm not sure this common on Salisbury diffs? Then it has to have the proper width. We will have to see what turns up. Thanks for the suggestion

Gord Wedman said:

A Salisbury would be nice if we could get a proper fit. Our axles have 11 splines so I'm not sure this common on Salisbury diffs? Then it has to have the proper width. We will have to see what turns up. Thanks for the suggestion

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Surely you mean 10 spline?

A Salisbury diff/axle is completely different from Rover so you would need the whole thing not just the diff. It is the same width to fit the vehicle.