Freelander 1 Cracked Freelander 1 IRD

Ere's some photo's of a broke'd Freelander ird (intermediate reduction drive). Think of it as a fixed ratio transfer box which takes the drive from the gearbox and passes it to the front wheels via a diff, and also to the rear wheels via the pinion gear.

Unfortunately this one has failed. There's a missing tooth in the larger gear and the case has cracked when the gears were forced apart. Normally caused by too much stress in the transmission. More often than not caused by a vcu (viscous coupling unit) being too tight or the tyres not being the same make/model/size. This one is oft a v6 Freelander which sadly is no longer on the road.

Video = Freelander 1 Cracked IRD Intermediate Reduction Drive

The ird is pictured upside down. When fitted to a Freelander the damage would be on the side closer to the ground.

This is the reason why we have spent so many years telling peeps to test their vcu.


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When the bolts holding the pinion to the main ird case were removed, I was able to remove the pinion. At this point part of the main ird case came away from the ird. So the small part of the case was only held in place by the pinion.


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Pinion on the right was removed from the cracked ird. You can see the metal has cracked. The bearing has also failed. The pinion on the left is for comparison only.


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been looking at the vcu on the wifes car it seems good at the moment,i done the figure of 8 test backwards at speed
(cheers gary) and nothing locked up,but some numptys got different makes on one side to the other,do these need swapping to the same axle? there is a rumble from it as if a wheel bearings going

THEengineer said:

been looking at the vcu on the wifes car it seems good at the moment,i done the figure of 8 test backwards at speed
(cheers gary) and nothing locked up,but some numptys got different makes on one side to the other,do these need swapping to the same axle? there is a rumble from it as if a wheel bearings going

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Ideally you need the same make/model/size of tyre on all 4 wheels. If you need to buy them then get 4 at the same time. If you can't do this then replace in axle sets. If you have tyres which are the same make/model/size but the tread depth is different, then put the deeper tread tyres on the rear.

Hippo said:

Ideally you need the same make/model/size of tyre on all 4 wheels. If you need to buy them then get 4 at the same time. If you can't do this then replace in axle sets. If you have tyres which are the same make/model/size but the tread depth is different, then put the deeper tread tyres on the rear.

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cheers hippo

lol, you're probably better off with them being split to each side because the each diff will equate to the smaller (or is it larger?) wheel and thus they'll both be turning at the same rate. It'll probably exasperate turning differences though - so they should really be changed.

that is a mess Hippo, when I had my second freelander and there were some rubbish car tyres on the back, I went and had Michelins put on the back not realising that the front were syncrones and the back were latitudes, and was on my way to London and the car did not feel right and we were in a snow blizzard and we pulled into a service station,
I phone my friend who immediately said you can not mix them latitudes with syncrones , so to compensate I let some air out of the latitudes and put some more in the syncrones, and it did the trick we came home Sunday night and on the Monday morning I went and got 2 latitudes on the front and all was well thank god the tyre place that put the first ones and the second ones on apologised and said we should have told you they do not mix ,I wonder if anything had gone wrong would they have paid up , I bet they would not. but that was nearly three years ago and it is still ok.

I'm told he drove it to the garage like that. It would be front wheel drive only after the crack. I haven't opened it yet but will do. Pinion still turns but sounds as rough as a tratter.

Hippo said:

I'm told he drove it to the garage like that. It would be front wheel drive only after the crack. I haven't opened it yet but will do. Pinion still turns but sounds as rough as a tratter.

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blimey , am waiting for the guy up the road to go like this , only time

maybe I should show him the pics, but he still won't listen

that must have been like driving with the brakes on

thks for sharing as always

Pinion photo's added to the first post.

Video added to the first post.