Discovery Driveshaft

A common failure on the Discovery 2 is the driveshaft. From the factory the Discoverys were delivered with drive shafts that you cannot service. As in grease. Because there are no grease zerts to add grease to the U-joints. So a common replacement item is to purchase a replacement drive shaft with serviceable U-joints. This could easily be done by removing your existing driveshaft and taking it to a shop and have them refurbish it with new U-joints. I chose the replacement. I now have a spare shaft and can take my time taking it to the shop I formerly mentioned, or I can buy the bits and do it myself.

I drove the Discovery to my friends shop in OKC. JagGuy (Mike) has a great shop for his Jaguar habit. He and Rogers have a huge shop with every imaginable tool available. Most importantly for this project is the lift. I couldn't imagine doing this job laying on my back in the driveway. But I hear it's doable that way. I wasn't interested in experimenting. The first task was moving the five Jaguars and one Triumph to get to the lift. With that done I started on the job. Keep in mind that it was 102 degrees outside and probably in the mid 90s in the garage. One of the things I hate the most, and I mean hate with a passion almost as great as my passion for Rovers, is being so hot that my eyelids sweat. I really hate that. This is the face I make right after I say the F-word. It also demonstrates nicely how hot it was that day.

First thing was to take some pics to document everything.

Front drive shaft axle side.

Front drive shaft transaxle side.

Rear drive shaft rotoflex.

With that done. I proceded to remove the front drive shaft. This was pretty straight forward. The most difficult part was the crown nuts Solihull used had basically the consistancy of lead. It would be easy to round them off, so use caution getting your wrenches good and tight and all the way down. As you move around the axle all you need to do is push the Rover forward and and back to have the axle turn a bit. Always use wheel chocks for safety.

I got the old shaft out and prepared the new shaft for insertion. You can compare the differences with close-ups of each end.

Double cardon.

Single end.

You can see the prominent grease zerks.

Never re-use a self-locking crown nut. That's a common shop rule. But you have to re-use them if the vendor doesn't send enough for you to finish the project and you just bought the last ones at the local Ace Hardware. I bought hardened ones due to the problem I had with the nuts rounding off that I described above. (nice blurry picture)

So basically turn the bolts and nuts until you have the new one back in place.

Front.

Rear.

Not much else to say about this. Remember to go ahead and grease it up at this point.

There was an interesting item bolted to the rear axle. After much thought and examination we decided it was a roller for assisting you over obstacles. We also decided it was mounted upside down to keep it out of the way, on the domestic streets of America.

I was now well on the way to getting the old rotoflex off and fitting the new one. You can see the complete contents of the bag they shipped. Which included only 3 bolts and corresponding crown nuts. That was exactly half of what you need to finish the job. Also the new bushing is seen there as well. As you can see in this picture there is what could only be described as a guiding shaft on the axle end. There is a bushing pressed into the end of the rear drive shaft. Deciding whether or not to replace it, came down to me stating if they wouldn't have shipped me a new one I wouldn't have replaced it. As we were to find out it was a pain in the tookas to get out. And required physical destruction using chisles and a very large vise. This is a blurry pic of what was left of the old bushing. I'm sure there is a better way to get that out than the one we used. Someday I'll find out what it is. I used a obseenly large ballpeen hammer to gently tap the new bushing back into the drive shaft.

I finished up the tightening and greased everything while I still had her up on the rack. After we got her off the rack we took the liberty of balancing and rotating the tires while I had it in the shop. Mike had just acquired a tire balancing machine. An old Mercedes dealership was "getting rid of them" so he picked it up really cheap. Short of a complete set of weights he's ready to do his own tire balancing. What I found was the tire shop had the correct weight on the wheels for the most part but it was in the wrong place on the rim. I'll have to take that back and ask them to do it again on my next day off.

This project should be considered a 2 Difficulty Scale. It would probably be a 3 without the lift. It is relatively straight forward and short of knowing the correct way to extract the bushing it was really easy.

Thanks for reading and happy Rovering.