How to Replace Worn Propshaft Universal Joints on Most Land Rovers Using a Britpart Kit

Hello, and welcome to BritParts. The home of Land Rover parts. I'm here in Shropshire at their workshop and I'm here with Paul Myers, MD. Paul, I know that you work here, but of course, you've got your own land rovers and you work on your own land rovers as well. What's the biggest and most interesting job you've done on one? I actually built an eight 1970 88 inch Land Rover really from a completely from parts. So from brand new parts. Wow. Wow. And what was the most difficult part of that process? Probably the most difficult part was cataloging all the parts, which is crazy cause that's what we do but there's so many parts on a series Land Rover. It takes an awful lot of time to find them all. Excellent. Well from the glories of building your own Land Rover to the basics. This is what we've got here. You Jason and prop shafts. So firstly, let's talk about the prop shaft itself. How would you, this is obviously pretty old and pretty worn. How would you tell if it's worn? Okay. The normal symptoms of, as you're taking a drive to the car to the axle, you'll get a loud clunk from the prop shaft. It will then as this one is quite worn and miss shaft become unbalanced and you'll start to feel vibration through the seat of the car. Yeah. And sometimes it can actually just feel like the car has got to misfire at speed, but it is actually a worn U drive. Really? That's interesting because once you've got it off it all, all its ills become apparent. I'm moving this around here. I can definitely feel the clunk and turning the other way on the other end. I mean that that's almost ready to come off, isn't it? It is, yes. Okay. So how do we remedy this, Paul? Okay. Universal joints are readily available for this and all the laundry and prop shafts which we have in stock is a simple kit to install and completely rectifies the problem. Okay. I'll use supply these with nipples as well, which I prefer, which means you can grease them yourselves. Sure. I'm not so keen on the sealed one. So that's a good thing to have. Yeah, it's regular greasing of the UJ is on the slider as well on the prop shaft is essential to keep them going. And always use new nuts and bolts. We always use new nuts and bolts. The Nylocs don't like being used twice really. So it's always a good idea to use them. And we will always use this prop trough bolt as well. Prop shaft bolt spanner socket, Yeah. which makes installation an awful lot easier. It's such a good thing. I mean the number of times I've struggled replacing UJs using a spanner turning it a flat at a time and I should have just got one of these. Sure. Fantastic. Well look, Steve's going to do the work on this and he's asked me to go and clean it up first because obviously you can't really do it properly until you've cleaned it up you'll never get those circuits out for a start. So I'm going to head off, clean this up, and meet Steve by the desktop. I'll see you in just a second. Okay. Hello, Steve. Hiya. Now, I've given this a really good clean cause you've got to give it a clean. I mean if you're going to work on it. Yes, we have. Yup. What's the first thing you're going to do, Steve? Well, first thing I'm going to do for starters, Yeah. is they're going to mark two parts that were taken apart to keep them in time. Because if we put them back together wrong way around, we'll get vibration on the vehicle. Okay. So all the yolks have got to go back in the same way they went out. Yes, they have. So first of all, we're literally going to take a pen and mark two different parts when it's together. Good tip. Next of all just for ease, we're going to remove, move the grease nipple act or the front, just to give us more clearance. Is it worth treating stuff like that by penetrating or just before we have go? Shouldn't have to, it should come out as, not all the time is they're totally dry. There still can be a little bit of grease in a failed UJ. All right. Once we've done that, then it's time to start removing the circlips. Okay. But the circlips are going to be quite tight in place. So what we're going to do is shock for starters to be able to release them. That's just a normal socket that fits inside. That's just a normal socket, normal half, but fits inside the circlip onto the bearing cap. Yup. We're just going to tap it to release. What you using there to take the circlip out? These are a pair of internal circlip pliers. We're just using them to remove the serve clips as so. And that's the fail, don't we reuse this or no? The kit comes with a new set of circlips so we'll always use the new set of circlips. Right. Taking it again on the opposite side. Right. If you excuse me, we'll put this on the vice and we'll start to dismantle. You've just done two sets of opposing circlips. And they hammering through on the yolk to get them to come out one side to get the cap to pop out one side. Yes, I am. Yeah. Okay, fine. And we'll do that both sides to make it easier before we carry on. Also the jaws of the vice are far enough apart to make sure that you can hammer it through while this yoke rests on the vice. Yeah. You're using the vice just to hold the fixed side of the yolk so you can remove the caps out of the other half. Gotcha. All right and then what you might have to do on some occasions is pinch it in the vice to remove the cap the rest of the way. Brilliant. So that's out. So here's some evidence as to why it might've failed. Part of the bearing cap has gone there and there are the needle bearings inside. It's not very pretty. And so we know repeat for the other side of that yolk. Yes. Yeah. We repeat the same process again, tapping the caps remove the circlips and then tap out to remove the UJ. Great. Okay. So here's the old UJ body. You can see there's, you can see the wear, can't you on the actual face of the inner runs on, particularly on that side there. It's pitted. Yeah, you see the moisture's got into, a bit of grime. Just takes one bit of grit, doesn't it, to sort of set it off. That's all it is. Yeah. What'd you do now, then now that you've got it out? Well, I'm just cleaning around where I've knocked the caps out, I've just to make sure I haven't damaged while dismantling. If there's any little burrs or anything, they've got to be cleaned up prior to reassemble. You don't have to be do this job again next year though. You just want it to be done. Well, as long as you maintain them and grease them regularly, you shouldn't have to. Yeah. So if you go off road playing for a day when you come back clean and grease them. Expel the water that you've put in while you've been off-roading. Yeah. So So you're just testing in there for burrows Testing in there for burrows. And if it were damaged while you're taking it apart. It's just when the cross joint bottoms out on the ends of the cap, you can see there just got caught. So we'll just have to address that out with the file before we can reassemble. You got very fine file there, very gentle. Just very fine, gentle file. Just carefully, look what you're doing just to remove that edge, not file the hole of the inside. Just literally just remove what you've marked. Okay. Brilliant. Right. Okay. So now we've got rid of this UJ. We're going to go over and see Fuzz. He's going to give us a few tips about making sure you've got the right prop shaft for the right job. If you're considering changing the suspension setup of your Land Rover so that you have more suspension travel, that means upwards and downwards movement, you're going to need to do something about the prop shaft. Imagine that this is a front axle. I know it's not one, but imagine that it is. When you're traveling along in your vehicle it's moving up and down and rotating on its own axis from the center like so. With the springs at either end moving up and down. Now, if you decide to lengthen the travel of those springs, then you have more axon movement up and down, which means that you need a greater amount of travel from your prop shaft. But your standard prop shaft only has so much travel. It can only move up and down so much, which is why when you're upgrading your suspension, you need to install a wide angle prop shaft to give you a far greater angle of movement. I can show you the two together. That's that one its limit. That's the old one at its limit. That means an awful lot of difference. The old one will pull apart, the new one will stay functional through wider angles and keep you going through thick and thin. Okay. So we've seen how to get rid of the old UJ. Now we've got to put the new one in. Steve, what'd you start with? Well first of all, with the new joint, we're going to remove the grease nipples so we don't damage it on the installation. Yup. Then we're going to remove two of the caps. Okay. You just pull them straight off like that, yeah? Yeah, just retaining the seal. Just take them off. Just let's have a quick look. So the grease is making sure that all the needles are stuck to the side, they won't fall in. Take them off nice and square, I'd imagine. Yeah. Right. First of all, we're going to take the first cap. Yeah. Fit it into the cap. So that's putting it in the vice to squeeze it in, yeah? Oops, sorry. Put it in the vice to locate him in. So I saw you were using the vice to position it properly. Yeah. You can make sure you push it in squarely. So you don't damage the maintenance surfaces. And you were feeling the pressure that you needed on each edge of it to make sure it was nice and true. Yes. You got to make sure it goes in parallel, yeah. No damage occurs. Okay. Next of all, we feed in the next joint till he's in there and then we'll proceed to push him through more so we can fit the circlip. You need a third pair of hands really, don't you? There we go. Yeah. So you're just pushing this in far enough so that the circlip will drop into the groove. Yep. Okay. Brilliant. Okay. Which side, is there any way round you need to put these or? Yes, there is. Yes. The circlip has like a rounded edge to one side and it has a machine flat edge to the other. Oh, I didn't realize that. So yeah, I can see now. So you've got, that's the machine edge and that's the edge that gets pushed through. Yeah. The machined edge needs to be facing outward. So it's grips into the grooves so it stops it coming out in operation. Brilliant. Okay. Well I've never realized that before so that's a tip for me. That's gone in nice and easy. Then we need to fit the next cap. So you've just pulled the body of the UJ out slightly from the cap on this side Yeah. Just pull the main UJ out slightly to allow for the alignment. Because when you insert this one, you need to try and align it on the outer face and also the innovator bearing face. So this is quite difficult. You'll start with two, roughly at the same time, if you can. And you just feel that little bit of give as it pops in. Yep, just as it pops in the both and just check, check that the seals move in and out freely. If that doesn't move as tightly, then there's a roller in the wrong place and you going to dismantle it again. And if you do need to dismantle it, you'd check inside the for the roller that's wrong and maneuver it back into position. Well, usually they flip out and go flat in the bottom? Do they? Right. So it won't assemble any further. If you're trying to force it with the vice, you'll break the bearing. So good time to have a pair of long nose pliers there. Yep. Yep. Hold that for you. That's going perfectly. Brilliant. Thank you. Now with this side, you insert the cap on the outer yolk and then what happens next? We'll just push that one in by hand as far as it'll go for starters. And then we thread it on to the other half, making sure that our marks are tightened up again. Okay. Like so. Then again. Okay, maybe a little bit more. A bit more. Okay. So I've got it all in. What's the final operation here? We're just going to tap each cap now in turn with a copper hammer just to shop the caps out into the ends of the UJ just to allow it to be free again. Okay. So, It should all be free. You can feel it all. And the last thing to do is to put the nipple back in? Yeah, just refit the greased nipple and then put some grease in it before you fit it back to the vehicle And standard grease? Just standard. Yep. General purpose grease. Brilliant. So having fitted the opposing sides of this UJ we're going to now repeat the process on the other two. If you want to go back and have a look at any of the other BritPart videos, just go to the menu and search for them. We'll finish up here. See you next time.