Swivel Housing Grease

On your Roange Rover Classic it is important to take care of your CV Joints. And to take care of them you need to do basically two things. Don't stress your CV Joint with tight turns under high torque and keep them lubed.

The CV Joint requires 80W EP lubricant to prevent wear. Many vendors offer a pre-measured tubes of lube. It works out to be 10 ounces of lube. The EP portion refers to "extreme pressure". The is why you can't just fill the swivel housing with any old 80 weight lubricant. I found the local O'Reily's didn't carry anything that met the EP requirement. Basically when the CV is spinning at highway speeds the EP allows the CV to stay lubed when a common 80 weight would fly off as the revolutions increased.

I bit the bullet and called the dealership for the lube. I didn't have time to wait for the 3rd party vendors to ship my two tubes. I was pleasantly surprised that the price was only 15$(US) for each tube. You need one tube per side.

When you change the fluid you need to remove the two plugs for the fluid. First you need to remove the filler plug. Why the filler first? If you can't fill it, then draining it is a bad thing. It is also important to remove the dirt and grime from the plug and area around the plug. If you remove the dirt and grime you prevent that dirt from getting into the swivel housing when it is open. After you remove the filler plug you can then proceed to remove the drain plug. The plug is oriented very close to the other parts and keeping the lubricant from getting on the tire and other parts is a challenge. You can remove the tire or just use some materials to direct the lubricant into your catch basin.

To add the lubricant it is much easier if you turn the wheels to the far extreme. When you do this you move the housing away from the CV and it opens up a path for the lube to run into the housing. Roll the tube like a tube of toothpaste and go slowly so as not to waste anything with spillage. Which as you can see in the picture is why you don't drop the tubes because they will break and prevent you from using the tubes as they were designed.

When you have the filler plug off you cut the tube where you it is labeled and insert the end into the swivel housing filler hole and squeeze it in. When you are done the tube will look like the rolled up tube on the left in the picture.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.