Disco axles.

presumably you welded the threaded bar in?
would have thought this might be easier then drilling and tapping a welded hole?

G spot, nope I didnt want to do that, with other stuff I've done I've realised its not such a good idea for various reasons, one is its tricky to weld a 10mm hole up in a 15mm thick flange, and then theres the issue of getting the gasket flange flat again, then another issue is not warping the flange in the first place, and another is i have a mag weld set, c02 produces very hard weld almost impossible to tap.
At least with the threaded bar the bar itself isnt tensile and I bolted the jig flange on first then screwed in the 'plug' to get em flat and welded on the back.
The hole is half in the flange and half in the 'plug', I've tapped one out so far and it was bloody hard to do, my threaded bar is probably tensile.
Jonno how did you sort out brake hoses front and back, did you get special ones made up?

The front I used the disco ones cos they were allready on the calipers. I also took the mounting bracket off the inner wing of the disco(where the flexy mounts under the wheelarch)and then bolted that to the chassis on the series.All I had to do then was take the union off the end of the brakepipe and swap it for the correct one to fit the disco flexy, easy!
The back wasn't too bad either,only problem I had was cos I was using discs on the rear the system on a disco is split to each side so where the brakepipes go to the t-piece on the axle there are 2 flexys but the series only has one.so what I did was buy a new standard series t-piece and flexy but metric so they would all be the same thread as the disco axle.I put a metric union on the rear metal brakepipe(originaly imperial) fitted the new flexy to that,screwed that into the t-piece and bolted it to the axle where the disco one originaly was,then made up new brakepipes from the rear calipers to the new t-piece,bled the brakes and then roadtested it and ****ed my head on the windscreen cos the brakes were so keen! Lol
I took it to the mot place and got them to test the brakes for efficiancy because I didn't know how it would be with the calipers off a disco mated to a series master cylinder but it's spot on, in fact he was puzzled to how an old 2a had such good brakes,then I told him it had discs all round,with a big grin on my face obviously!

Only thing is,mines got a S3 bulkhead(fire away with the insults)so its got a servo,if you don't have a servo you might have problems with efficiency

Gonna have to read that when I have more time, but sounds logical.
Mine is a series 3 so does have a swervo.

Heres a couple of pics of my re-drilled axle, the screw heads you see are just bits of threaded bar with hacksaw cuts both ends so I can tighten them with a 'driver, it was bleeding hard to tap those, I would deffo not reccomending mig welding the holes up then drilling and tapping, not with C02 anyways, on this I stick welded them with machineable weld rods with a stick welder, and a couple I did with mi mig, the mig weld nearly broke the taps it was that hard.
Tapping out the holes took hours, had to keep swapping from taper to plug taps, cutting a bit more each time.
An I still have the other side to do.
At least the jig worked.

just occured to me while lookin at your pics, werent the series
swivels nut and bolted?
woulda saved cutting a thread.

Never had a series one out, they are nutted yep, but they could be threaded and nutted.
If it were possible to have done that I would have, the axle tube or the flange size are diffo on the disco, there is no space for a nut on the back.
If I screw up or break a tap on the other side I've allready thought about making 15mm thick half round washers with threads in and putting these behind the original holes drilled out with longer screws.

I made a gizmo a bit back that spark erodes knacked bolts and taps, thrown together from crap but its got me out the poo at home and work a couple of times.

dr pepper said:

I made a gizmo a bit back that spark erodes knacked bolts and taps, thrown together from crap but its got me out the poo at home and work a couple of times.

Click to expand...

hmmmm tell us more.....

thought there might be a reason for tapping.

Its a heap of junk really, its made from a scraped bubble jet printer, a stepper motor turns a length of threaded rod thats connected to a pin chcuk with a tig welding electrode in it, the motor advances the tig tip till it touches the job, then current begins to rise through an inductor, when this gets to a preset value the motor retracts the tip and the cycle restarts, eating away at the broken bit.

Good for getting out broken head studs as well, and broken bolts in motorcycle ally brake calipers.

and all the times i ended up with the job on the tig stick, never realised i was spark eroding!

Well not quite the same, with the motorised tip though I spose you could use the tig weld set as the power supply.
I only used the tig electrode as the only thing I had to hand that wouldnt get blown to bits.

Sorry to drag up a old thread, but im about to weld my leaf spring mounts on to my disco axle casing, but before i do, i just want to clarify the angles of things. Ive read through this whole threads, but ive got confused about positive and negative caster angles.
im not going the route of drilling and re-tapping the swivels, im going the same route as V8jon, line it up and hope for the best.

My question is:

Is the caster angle meant to be 3 degrees positive? as in the the top swivel pin is further towards the back of the vehicle than the bottom pin.

And secondly, you say that the diff nose should be at 12 degrees to achieve this 3 degrees caster, is that 12 degrees if you put an inclonmeter on the diff flange? or on a flat on the diff nose i.e where the steering damper mounts to?

Thanks for any help, i just dont want to get this wrong before i join the mounts on permenantly.

Sorry to drag up a old thread, but im about to weld my leaf spring mounts on to my disco axle casing, but before i do, i just want to clarify the angles of things. Ive read through this whole threads, but ive got confused about positive and negative caster angles.

This is the bit that has confused me
"Disco/deffy axles with coils are diffo, if you set the axle so that the susp spring mount is dead level (ie the spring would be vertical), then the diff nose angle will be 12 degrees up from horizontal (like it is in the vehicle), and the castor will be the req 3 degrees.

So what we need to do is to weld on the leaf spring mounts horizontal on the disco axle so that the diff nose is also 90 degrees horizontal, then re-drill the holes for the swivel mounts and rotate them 12 degrees so that the req castor is back to 3 degrees.
If you dont re-drill the holes, the castor would be 9 degrees negative"

Surely this is saying that as standard the caster is 3 degrees negative to start with, i.e the top swivel pin being further infront of the bottom pin??

im not going the route of drilling and re-tapping the swivels, im going the same route as V8jon, line it up and hope for the best.

My question is:

Is the caster angle meant to be 3 degrees positive? as in the the top swivel pin is further towards the back of the vehicle than the bottom pin.

And secondly, you say that the diff nose should be at 12 degrees to achieve this 3 degrees caster, is that 12 degrees if you put an inclonmeter on the diff flange? or on a flat on the diff nose i.e where the steering damper mounts to?

Thanks for any help, i just dont want to get this wrong before i join the mounts on permenantly.

the caster angle is 3 degrees with the top pin been behind bottom pin so that a line drawn through both centers will hit the ground in front of pins as in the way motor bike forks run this is positive caster ,diff will sit right if this set caster is 3 degrees on series as well as defenders etc

"ha haa!" three days I scratched my head about this, in the end I put the axle in place with the u-bolts on loose and lined it all up then welded it on! It worked like a treat!

Is this a worthwhile upgrade to a series ?

Dr_evil said:

Is this a worthwhile upgrade to a series ?

Click to expand...

If you had a standard 2 1/4 I would say no as there's nothing wrong with series axles,the reason I put disco axles on mine was I wanted something stronger to cope with the V8 (fed up of changing diffs and halfshafts) and so far nothings broken plus you get the added benefit of disc brakes all round and a better turning circle.

haha well I think I might consider it once mine break for the first time with the V8

After that power steering is my next upgrade