I'd been doing 70, just moments before it seized for the first time. But thankfully I wasn't going so fast when it did.
.
The surface of the teeth are also very pitted, presumably from lumps of bearing roller being trapped within the gear mesh, causing damage to the gear surfaces.I'm guessing the weak bearing has welded solid, which is going to make removing the pinion almost impossible, as the pinion needs to be rotated to remove the securing nut.
I've rebuilt many gearboxes and diffs over the decades, and good mechanical aptitude to know what is serviceable, and what isn't. Technically the crown wheel and pinion will work, but they will be far from satisfactory, and will wear out completely at some point.
I must admit, it tempting to put it back together with new bearings and see how it goes.
I've been thinking about this diff failure. I don't think it's the original. Inside I found some characters written on the casing (in one of the photos), which I believe are probably from a diff reconditioner.
The small amount of oil presented, leaves me to believe that it could well have never been filled with oil after it was fitted. The oil in there being what was used in assembly, and some of this has been escaping due to heat.
The pictures show the diff has been getting really hot (understandably), so I'm guessing the pinion bearings have heat welded themselves together.
I'm going to try to get the pinion out when I have time, but due to the damage to the pinion and crown wheel teeth, there seems no point in trying to fix it. I could potentially replace the damaged bearings, but it'll have lots of backlash in the gears and it would be rather noisy too.
I simply don't understand how incompetent the person or persons looking after this vehicle were.
It's possible that the fluid level was checked with the wrong plug (Haldex plug is also in the diff case)?, but surely someone working on it would have checked which plug does what??
It's bloody annoying, that such a potentially nice vehicle, has been maintained by someone completely clueless.
The crown wheel and pinion look like they would clean up / dress down and work - for a while... But doing that would indeed be a compromise, and is far from right, or "by the book". But the weighting of the decision making process to whether to go for the compromise repair or not will be subjective, no doubt influenced by our own backgrounds. I don't see you ever having work in a cowboy garage bodging stuff on the cheap, so you'd err on the side of a quality job, maybe main dealers or reputable specialists or quality indy garages? But my background on oil rigs, is a different kettle of fish, if a piece of equipment breaks and puts the drilling operations on hold, first couple, maybe first six hours are "free maintenance", thereafter the rig is on "downtime", effectively off-hired until its fixed, thus the rig's owners are catching a cold for ~£20k per hour while we are shut down. As you can imagine, this context, particularly the mounting pressure from ever increasingly senior levels of management escalating to executives gives rise to a predilection towards implementing "creative", albeit "temporary", solutions. I'd give serious consideration to it John, if nothing else it would buy you 6 months without having to cough up for a refurbished diff for a motor you are becoming wary/ambivalent about. If you do it, just make it a monthly PM to suck some oil out of it to check the glitter factor, if it starts getting too glittery, accelerate the timetable for the new diff, or make the decision to webuyanycar / PX it?
I'm sure it'll clean up OK. There is a distinct burr on the top land, where the metal has been removed from the gear face and pushed out the way to it's new and current position. This has reduced tooth thickness by quite a degree, and also changed the face profile.
The rest is a long story for another day.
I'm hoping nothing else is going to fail in the short term, although I suspect it'll need a clutch sooner or later, as it got some abuse getting the vehicle off the carriageway with locked rear wheels.
The pinion is stuck fast at the moment. Unfortunately I can't release the securing nut, but I'll try to work a way to shift that at the weekend. If removing the nut allows the pinion to come out the casing, then there's a fighting chance I can get it working again, at least in the short term.
Combellacks have an 07 plate FL2 TD4 at the moment if it's of any interest. They aren't know for being the cheapest though...
Thanks.
That could end up being a massive time sink, maybes too much time for a sub optimal solution that you're probably going to have to revisit?
Generally that is the way I like to operate - quality engineering is, after all, what made Britain great. I always felt bad about the temporary botches done to get an oil rig back on ops, but took great satisfaction in later putting them to rights, even if they were oftentimes fixed weeks or months afterward. However, much as I disliked the "cobble it together" approach that was sometimes necessary, I knew that it was utter narcissism to expect the rig(s) owner's to absorb six or seven figures of lost revenue just to appease my dislike of botching things.My mentor was a proper old school automotive engineer, the kind that did the job once, because he did it right. That mindset has stuck with me for 35 year's, but also found me at loggerheads with clueless, profit orientated management on more than one occasion, so left the automotive industry.
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