Hi All

Had my Diff Reconditioned by A & B Landover (£400 including oils)19 months and 12,000 miles ago and its gone again.

ARE BELL ENGINEERING ONES THAT MUCH BETTER.

OR IS JUST THE Sh.t DESIGN.

I am probably going to do the bearing myself this time.

Does anyone have the pinion nut tool to rent or buy.

or does anyone know of a spine socket that will fit the pinion splines.
I can source a 41 mm socket to make the outer part of the tool.
or get the tool for £120 through Bosch-automotive.

PLUS
When double checking if it was the diff (rear seats down and boot floor removed), I removed the FB6 fuse to stop the Haldex working, this greatly reduced the noise under load but it is still there as the pinion rotates as the bearing is now badly worn .

Which made me wonder,
Is there a way off tricking the ECU into thinking the Haldex is engaged without removing the fuse and having the light flashing on the dash.

Enabling a switchable system from FWD to 4x4 when needed for the odd snowfall or stuck on a muddy camp site.

REDUCING THE CONSTANT LOAD ON THE BEARING

I'm sure there is an Electrical wizard out there somewhere

Did you had the Q106 service action applied?
It deals exactly with this, besides solving a problem with the autobox's TCC.
https://www.freel2.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11383/Q106.pdf

What I don't understand is if it is a design why did mine last 185k+ miles and was still quiet and working the day we sold the car. Off-road regular, towing a caravan across Europe several times, dragged 3.5tonne vehicles out of ditches - think of anything you would expect of a land Rover and ours did it without fuss.

Yes we had the software update, and it did make the car gear changes more slushy - maybe that is the answer, I do believe that the modified Bell differential is better, but some units as standard are fit for purpose. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

Thanks Alex and Andy
When i took the diff out it looked like it had been there since new.
The first owner did 96,000 miles in the first 3 years (probably motorway miles) then it was used as a shopping basket, lots of stop starts, I bought it with the diff gone 20 months ago at the right price and had it reconditioned I only do short runs in it with the occasional caravan towing (two 1100 mile French touring) mainly motorways at 55 mph on cruise control.
The gear changes are sweet, but after the diff is repaired I will investigate The software update
I would still like to be able to turn it off until needed, saving wear and maybe a bit of fuel.
Mike

From the Bell Engineering website...

Quote:

at Bell Engineering we have devised a method to modify the diff to allow us to fit a physically larger nose bearing that can withstand 25% greater loading, greatly improving the life of these diffs. These upsized bearings have been fitted to all our diffs since April 2015. At present we are the only company offering the upsized bearing.

Bell Engineering are for sure the people to go to. Had mine done recently. Drove the 100 miles plus to get it done and worth it.
Austin completed the work in his fastest ever time and I was on my way back home in comparative silence.
 First and only FL2 from new. Stornaway Grey 77k

Wish I used him last time.

So did it myself this time.
I made the pinion nut tool for £15.00 (cost £177.00 new) £50 for bearings (made in japan, "not India") £81 for collapsible spacer, oil seals, diff & haldex oil,

Found the only Proto Inch/pound torque wrench on UK E-Bay for £73 to adjust bearing preload ( after calibrating it first)

The Pinion nose and both diff carrier bearings were SKF "India" and the Pinion inner bearing was SKF "Germany"

When grinding the bearings off the Indian ones were a lot easier to grind off than the German one.

Hi Mike,

How did you make your tooling? I stripped a haldex unit to make mine: http://www.freel2.com/forum/topic29814.html

Hi MRRover75

I contacted the guy who did the Russian video on you tube and he told me used the centre of a Mondeo clutch

(23 spline 25.4 mm)

So that's what I used, it was a little loose on the splines but worked ok. After looking at other clutches online I thought that maybe a vw clutch would be better (24mm 23 spline) but my friendly clutch centre did not have a second hand to try.

The mondeo one worked fine.

I wish I used 3/4 drive bars as the 1/2 inch ones I used with a scaffold bar tended to give a lot when tightening to crush the spacer.

LIKE THE TUTORIAL YOU POSTED

I TRIED ADDING SOME PHOTOS TO MY GALLERY
BUT NO LUCK

Mike Bentley wrote:

I wish I used 3/4 drive bars as the 1/2 inch ones I used with a scaffold bar tended to give a lot when tightening to crush the spacer.

LIKE THE TUTORIAL YOU POSTED

Same experience here Found that there was no need to use the torque wrench as the 250NM was far away enough to crush the spacer. Basically I had to tighten the nut until the play in the shaft was nearly gone, then in increments of approx 1 deg and measure the necessary drive torque in between each step.

I did the same. It was so tight I had to use a scaffold tube as an extension.

I also replaced the diff carrier bearings as totally shot.
I assembled the diff carrier in the casing with out the pinion in and checked the preload by banging a wooden file handle in the carrier then banging an allen key socket in the handle then measured the preload. It was 11 inch pounds, which seemed reasonable. I do not know what it should be but other diffs have between 12 and 18 Inch/pounds so I left it at that.
with the diff side off and the pinion now properly in place and preloaded, I measured the back lash from a point about halfway from the centre of the crown wheel and came up with 0.005" equating to around 0.010" at the outer part of the crown wheel, (it felt about right to me).
Anyway done about 100 miles now and it is nice and quite

FL2 TD4 HSE Auto 2010 - Same problem, whine from back starting at 30mph and 1,500rpm. Strange thing is that it is worst at 35mph then decreases again. Another confusing symptom is there is no difference in the noise with the haldex unit on or off (I removed fuse FB6 in the boot to disable / enable). Is this still a diff problem?

Could be anything to include tyres,wheel bearings or diff. FL2 MY10 TD4 GS traded in at 2 years
FL2 MY13 TD4 GS Current

Ah yes, forgot to mention I have replaced both rear tyres and used rudimentary stethoscope on rear wheel hubs (all clear).