New front Propshaft and transmission fluid

Long rebuild and lots of welding said that things mechanically should be fine now the structure is sound.

Guess again fat boi!!!

I found that there was a bit of vibration from the front end at around 45mph to 55mph 😞😞

I picked up a new wide angle prop shaft and set about getting it fitted.

Fit the new one up, you will see that I have fitted the nuts but as I wound them on one by one it was my effort to pull them all up equally and evenly.

Where as the transfer box end sees the bolt heads held captive against the output flange and only requires the use of a spanner to tighten the nuts on the bolts but the diff input shaft requires at least two spanners or a socket and a spanner to nip them up.

All fitted up and the bolts all nipped up.

Here you can see the old prop shaft, it is a solid bar type that you would ordinarily find on a V8 engined vehicle because this originally came off my old 3.9 V8 Discovery, the solid bar was used as a means of avoiding the catalytic converters but I have moved back to a regular tubular prop shaft.

I figured that I ought change out the transmission fluid as it's been in there a while and I need to do the axles as well but that is for a whole other day lol.

What can I say, it was rank and rancid, badly contaminated with water and emulsified.  How did that happen I wonder?  Well what happened was, when I refitted the front wing with the snorkel on I hadn't noticed that the extended breather had slipped out of the cable clips and had rested in the roof gutter, all that rain that we had has found it's way in there and made a mess.

First thing you must do with any fluid replacement is to remove the filler plug, found on the right hand side of the gearbox half way up, 13mm open ended spanner is perfect.

I found out by surprise that the gearbox was over full when the fluid shot out the filler hole and down the sleeve of my boiler suit.

On the bottom of the box is the big 32mm drain plug with magnet on it and behind the cross member there is the transmission screen filter.

This is the goop in the drain pot.

This is the transmission screen filter as it came out, it was disgusting.

The crap all over it was some sort of varnish or paint.

As it was so rank I decided that I would flush it through a bit and popped the plugs back in and put a litre of oil back in and with the transfer box in neutral I popped it in 4th gear and let it run a while and then drained it through.

Still looked like this, purple-ish but not grey and stinking like before.

So I put the plugs back in and fulled it up, I have a 400 mile round trip to do  and will drain it out and replace it when I get back.

Thanks for looking.