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Driving home has always been an adventure. This drive home would be even better. I made it all the way into Norman and then came the left turn that told me something had gone wrong. As I accelerated from a dead stop and turned left on to Rock Creek I heard the crunch. Immediately I looked in the mirrors to determine if I had run over something. My eyes aren't what they used to be and my attention to details in the road is also not as it was many years ago. Maybe I ran over a hub cap or one of those beauty rings the kids are so fond of these days. Nothing in the mirrors.

I proceeded on and as Obi Wan Kenobi said in Episode 4, "I have felt a great disturbance in the force as if a CV joint suddenly cried out in terror and was suddenly silenced." Or something close to that, I'm sure. I indeed felt that something was not quite right. I couldn't tell really what it was. But something didn't feel right. I made the right turn on to Sooner and nothing happened worth mentioning. On to Robinson and this left turn I made rolling and nothing happened. On to drop off my rider and I came to a stop leaving his neighborhood and as I accelerated the sound of that crunch made me wonder if I would make it the last 2 miles home.

Up into the driveway it crunched and I was beginning to wonder what on earth had happened. As my frequent readers are aware, I had replaced the left CV joint not too long ago (September 2003). I thought for sure that because of the problem when I turned left that it had failed.

I ordered a new CV joint from Motorcars LTD they had a great price. There was a slight mix-up in the delivery that I was unaware of until a headlight for a Jaguar AND my CV joint were sitting in my house when I got home that Friday. They had shipped my CV Joint to a Jag owner who was expecting a headlight. They then oovernighted my part to me so I was sure to get it when they promised. Excellent service. I sent the Jaguar headlight back to them. I will definately buy from them again.

I planned the weekend to fix the Rover. I ordered a shop manual but knew it would not arrive in time to be of use. So I asked for help on the board and Alan Bates faxed me his pages from his manual. I would highly recommend having the pages for this project. Alan thanks a bunch I owe you big time. I called the JagGuy and generally asked him about this project. I told him I was concerned about doing this job he replied to me, "I find your lack of faith disturbing." Or something close to that. He said in no uncertain terms, "Eric you can do this." Yet I was still concerned so I invited The Ditchfinder over to help. JagGuy and I had done the left side together and I was seventy-five percent sure I could do the job. But I was still a little worried.

We started on the Rover and quickly determined it was not the left CV joint after all. The right wheel moved freely when the left was turned. It has a limited slip differential but it should eventually catch and spin. It did not and besides all that the horrible grinding noise was coming directly from that hub. A quick call to JagGuy confirmed this theory. He told me his did exactly the same thing.

I changed the side I was to work on by moving the crap in the garage to allow for work on that side of the truck. We tore into the work by first draining the differential and removing the wheel. There is a hub there held on by five bolts. See image 1. We have the socket in place and are removing the bolts. It was necessary to use a pry bar to hold the hub from turning while loosening these bolts. We used a length of 1x1 wood. It didn't damage the lug bolts and worked good with two people working on it.

With the hub removed you can now see the "big giant nut". There are actually two of these separated by a large washer made of a soft metal which is easy to bend. You bend it to conform to the inner and outer nuts. It has the affect of locking them I guess. See image 2. You will need a rather large wrench for this part. We used a large pair of channel locks opened all the way. They worked pretty good but I'm sure there is a better tool for this. We banged up the nut pretty good getting it off. You will need to remove the brake caliper and secure it out of the way. We used some handy cord to do this. The ABS sensor and it's two bolts are next. A great deal of weight is on these two bolts. As this is the pivot for the hub. You can see those out of the way in this image. See image 3A.

After you get those out you can remove the break disc. It has two sets of bearings in it so be careful. We pulled them and set it to the side. See image 3. After it is out of the way you can get to the housing for the CV joint. See image 4. There are six bolts holding this and a spacer on. In this image you can see the CV joint sticking out of what could best be described as a trumpet or bell shaped housing. A labeled and detailed pic is here. See image 4a.

Remove those bolts to reveal the inside of the hub. The CV joint is there and you can pull it out. It is attached to the half shaft going in to the differential and will come out all together as it is held together with a "C" ring on the end of the half shaft. Sorry no pictures. We removed the half shaft from the CV joint and fished out the bits and pieces. See image 5. At this point I must point out the source of the failure was not present when we removed the trumpet. The hub was mostly devoid of the lubricant that should have filled the space. Thus causing wear and thusly causing the part to fail. With the parts all apart there is a drain plug on the side of the housing and you could drain and refill the cavity with fresh and wonderful lubricant. Which probably should be done and I'm sure on a Preventative Maintenance sheet somewhere it is recommended to do this at some interval. There was a remarkable red rust you can see in the image. I am not sure what it is made of but it is present and coats everything.

Now that you can see the big bits of CV joint you must realize that there are others deep in the hub. And because of this you must not stop here. You must remove the hub completely and get it good and clean. If you do not you will undoubtedly destroy the bearings supporting the entire weight of the vehicle with the little bits inevitably working in to the bearing and causing premature wear.

As with the bolts that hold the pivot point at the top you must remove the pivot point from the bottom. This is held in place by two torx 40 bolts. Star end or what ever you like to call them. This in my opinion was the only part of the design of this part of the truck that should have been rethought. Conventional bolts would have been better here. I retrieved The Ditchfinder's T-40 head socket and put in the bolt. I began to apply pressure and after it slipped out a couple of times I looked at the tool and it was now a screw. I had twisted it so much that the threads of the tool were ruined. At this point I was embarrassed and tired of the mess. We decided I needed some tools and my wife was at work with the car so we cleaned up and called it a night. It was 5:30pm when we started and it was then nearly 8:00pm.

The next day I finished up my family obligations and we finished running the kids to their basketball games for the day. I went to O'Reilly's and bought a T-40 torx and some other items. See tools image. The T-40 the kid behind the counter initially recommended was this torx image. I inserted this into the head of the torx on the truck when I got home and in an instant it was broke off.
"What a piece of junk."
Luke's words in Star Wars could not echo my feelings any better. So I went back down to O'Reilly's and returned the obviously defective tool and bought one of these. A proper tool, I was sure.

Well that left me with a torx tool broke off in the head of one of the bolts. I once again called JagGuy he said he had to drill his out. Great! One thing I have never had any luck with is drill bits. I also realized that if I drill these out I will have to find replacement bolts and the project will linger on another few days. I opted to drill it out and see what happened. I got the drill in place and began to apply some pressure and then SNAP. Wirr. Ouch! Son-of-a-@#$%, @#$%ing mother loving %$#$#. The drill bit broke. My hand accelerated rapidly toward the hub assembly and came to a lovely stop on a nice bit of bracket under the hub and tore a rather deep hole in the fleshy part of my hand between the thumb and index finger. Best part was the grease and oil and muck on my hands would have kept even the most stout bacteria from existence but the wound was now full of it too. With a good amount of blood oozing out I went in to clean up and try to apply a bandage knowing full well there was no way it would stick to my skin and definately not for long after I got greasy again. See this image. There are the two torx and the lovely Ginsu bracket that sliced and diced my hand.

Unknown to me at the time of the break I had managed to drill out the soft tool. Leaving the torx bolt, mostly intact. The hardened bolt was only just then beginning to give way and caused the centuries old drill bit to break. So I put the good torx-40 to work and got both of the torx bolts out. I damaged the torx bolt that had the tool in it a bit, but I was able to get it to break free and come out out with a little creative tool use varying the angle and such.

To get the outer housing off you have to remove the tie-rod end. I purchased a remover and popped it out. You can see an image of it here. See this image. It also shows the mud shield, that was necessary to remove a few steps ago, as it rests on the garage floor. The lovely rust is very visable. JagGuy recommended some Brake Cleaner to clean the parts. So I applied it liberally to everything you have seen. What a smart fellow I would be if I just went ahead and replaced the tie-rod ends while I have it apart. You can see this one is nearly gone. Messed up tie-rod. Well a long story told short it was not to be in my tired condition. It would not budge so I went on with the project at hand.

I finished the disassembly and cleaned all the parts. Once everything was cleaned off I freaked a bit when I saw the wear in the bottom of the housing. Wear in the housing. Well I called JagGuy and asked him about this. He reassured me it was intentional milling from the factory. Boy was I relieved to hear that. I finished packing every bearing with new grease and coating every thing in grease just to be safe. If it looked like it had grease I put some on it. Running dry is what killed it in the first place.

At some point I must state some things so that it is understood how important these things are. First there are bearings here that can't be taken lightly. The entire weight of your Rover rest on these bearings. You don't want them to be damaged or run dry. Inspect the bearings for damage and make sure you are careful when you seat them.

When you look at the pic of new tools. New tools and sundries. You can see two things I would have done differently. I had to go back to the store and get "blue" thread locker. Red is considered "permanent". You really want the blue kind instead. And my tie rod separater is the more brutal kind. There is another type that I would recommend if you intend to reuse any tie-rod you remove. One of these would be good. There is another type in this Google search for tie rod puller. The manual has yet another kind of puller that must be of British manufacture. What I bought was refered to as a pickle fork on one of the sites. So you can spend $10(US) like I did or $35(US) and on up. It's your call. I didn't own a 17mm socket and you already know the story of the T-40 torx. I gave it to The Ditchfinder to replace the one of his I messed up. The silicone gasket maker is something you will use again. I have had occasion to use it twice now. Once for the water pump and now for the CV joint replacement. It is one of those things like thread locker you should have in your garage.

Now it was time to reassemble. I started by lubing the drive shaft seal. There is a seal about 8 inches down the shaft that sits in a rubber gasket. It separates the differential oil from the hub grease. Lube it. You don't want it to run dry. My seal on the inside of the hub was in good condition so I did not replace it. I will keep an eye on it and replace it if I see any leaks there. I started reassembling the parts in mostly the same order as they came out. It is really straight forward and the only problems I had were failing to seat the CV joint far enough into the hub which caused me to take it nearly all the way apart twice to get it right. I am still not sure what I was doing wrong but I finally got it. At the end you need to seat the CV joint by pulling it out for the C clips to go on. You can use one of the bolts and thread it into the end of the CV joint and give it a yank. Set the C clip and your done.

Rap up. It's good to have a digital camera. Take a picture if you need to, of every thing you remove and when you reassemble you can look at the pictures. I took a bunch of pictures and was able at one point to email them to the JagGuy for his opinions. I felt like a doctor, maybe even Marcus Welby, M.D. looking at an x-ray and advising a client via telephone. Anyway take pictures, I would have taken more but I got very greasy and bloody so I didn't want to muss up the camera any more than I did. If it had been earlier and not well after the kid's bedtime when I finished I would have had RovErica taking the pics. I put the tools away, sort of, they are stacked on the workbench for now. I filled the differential with Castrol Hypoy C. I filled the CV joint housing with the magical fluid I requested. It comes in a lovely tube, premeasured, that you cut and pour into the filler whole. There is a handy trick if you turn your wheel to one side or the other, you can more easily get the fluid in.

I finished the job at 11:30pm on Saturday. I woke, went to church, and came home and drove the Big White Bus for the first time after such a major surgery. I enjoyed the feeling that I had done the work and that it seemed to be a successful conclusion to a very hard day.

The difficulty of this project is a 3.75 on the Difficulty Scale. I would say this is a 4 on the scale if you don't have a good collection of tools. Including a good place to work on your truck, jack stands, torx tools, and various metric wrenches in different lengths and sizes. All's well and the CV joint seems to be just great as I write this. But I now have the worry of the tie-rod's condition hovering over me until Saturday when I attempt to fix them.

CV Joint Replacement