Loss of drive

Any ideas about this .....

Driving along (300Tdi 110) in 5th no problem. Drive totally goes, suddenly but quietly i.e. engine revs but landy rolls to halt.

Try everything .... vehicle will only move if diff-lock on. Creep home (well nearly).

Drive goes again 400 yds from house. Every gear and transfer box combination results in dreadful noises from bell-housing/first motion shaft area. Get towed home.

Jack up axles to check half-shafts, etc, etc. Can't find fault. take for short drive ..... EVERYTHING OK !!!!!!

Obviously can't be trusted until sorted so please, ANY IDEAS!:confused2:

Mine did this - is 2 mils up the side of a rather muddy hill in the lakes in 2008.

The center bearing in the trasfer box went, causing it to keep jumping out of gear. Eventualy after the bearing has disintigrated itsself, and smashed the speedo spindle to bits and shreaded the selector into a million bits, it drove wonderfully after i manually selected H and put some oil in the box - opps

Went for another 380 miles (Torver -> London) on two bearings - blew up about 30 miles later.

Anyway back to sorting out your problem----

I would suggest remoiving the oil drin plug from the transfer box to see if there are any shreads of metal in the oil / stuck to the magnet on the end of the drain plug - IF YOU ARE SURE that the half shafts and CV joints are fine I would suspect the transfer box is the next point of call.

Also when it did start making the noises was it related to the landy moving, or the engine revs / did it stop when you put the main box into N?

Great stuff. Thanks for your replies. On the first occassion everything was silent, just as if say the centre of the clutch had ripped out or a drive shaft had gone. On the second occassion the grinding noise from the gearbox came when I let the clutch out. I can imagine things that fit this but not having it seemingly work well again.

It is interesting that you had this too. I'll check the drain plug half hoping to find something and half not!

Thanks again.

Of topic (well it is my topic) I live about 7 miles from Torver!

My first Landy was bought at auction from the Lake Distric National Park people. It still had vinyls on the side and, shame to say, I didn't remove them for a couple of years ..... able to roam at will anywhere in the Lakes!

I found out what was causing this and thought some one (anyone?) might be interested as I have never seen anything quite like this.
Took the gearbox out. (Jesus ... the corrosion behind the gearbox x-member!!!!!)
The centre of the clutch plate had become slightly deranged. The inner splined boss was driven by a dog-clutch sort of arrangement which gave a bit of play for the shock absorber springs to give as they worked.
The slight derangement allowed the boss to drop out of (and back into) engagement with the dog clutch depending on ... well chance or circumstance.
When out of engagement it made the awful noise. When in it drove perfectly as there was no gearbox/ transfer box fault
All in all a lot of money saved and an opportunity to weld up some areas I wouldn't have got to!

Thanks for your contributions.