Free-Wheeling Hubs

The fairey free-Wheeling hubs on my truck have started all of a sudden to make a horrendous noise when in their free position. It was described by a more feminine passenger of mine as sounding like a bird cooing. It seems to do it completely at random with no relation to change of speed or direction of travel.

I've never made much effort to try and understand them, but I did notice that on one side the ring with the two dowels on it, which is presumably part of the clutch, spins round fairly freely whereas on the good side it doesn't.

Any ideas? Is it scrap or shall I take it apart and put it back together again?

What year of series? Some have an oil feed to the hubs. Later ones like my series 3 have an extra oil seal and the free wheel hubs are greased. I have Superwinch ones fitted which should be greased every 4000 miles. If mine ever break I will go back to standard as I dont find much advantage using them.

Presumably you run occasionally with the hubs engaged, right?

If you don't, they dry out as no lubrication is circulated and they don't like it at all!

Hmm, they have been fairly well greased. they get engaged a few times a month when I'm about to drive through something sticky looking. I just think it would be a shame to lose them as I like the ability to run 2wd low range for maneuvering, and they look quite period too

In that case then, I would be inclined to strip them off, give them a good clean in either paraffin or diesel, re-grease them and stick them back on.

It's probably a build up of crap from over the years

Peaches said:

Hmm, they have been fairly well greased. they get engaged a few times a month when I'm about to drive through something sticky looking. I just think it would be a shame to lose them as I like the ability to run 2wd low range for maneuvering, and they look quite period too

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If you don't press the yellow lever down, you're still in 2wd, so you can have low range without the freewheel hubs. I got rid of mine in the end. It's much handier off road when you don't have to jump out to engage them.

Zeaphod I don't think that's correct ( or I misunderstood) if the red one is in low range you have low range 4wd, (assuiming the FWH's are engaged, or you don't have FWH'S) the yellow one down is 4wd high range, but if you make the FWH's free then with the red back or yellow down you only get 2wd (and high or low respectively)

Hmmm. It's a good few years since I owned a Series, you may be right.

zeaphod said:

Hmmm. It's a good few years since I owned a Series, you may be right.

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He is, low range is always 4wd as far as the hubs anyway

You're right, apologies. Just shows how the memory is unreliable - I even did a full gearbox rebuild back in the day.
The "whats all dem levers for" says "4 wheel drive is automatically engaged by selection of low transfer box. Yellow control knob remains in the dis-engaged position"
I'd still get rid of the hubs though.

The hubs are great when it comes to removing/ refitting the front propshaft Transfer/ gear box in neutral, fwh's disengaged and rotate the shaft to get at the bolts, much easier (May be one of the few reasons I'm keeping mine )

No worries on the mistake
Anyway, i used to have them on my last series, and I looked into them (I had super winch) and the general theme of opinion was, if they work keep and use them, if they don't, take apart clean down, refit and grease etc, if summit bad has happened then fit normal ones, and if they are already fitted, keep and if not then there's no point in fitting them due to minimal benefits