Separate all shaft sections. Discard old u-joints and rubber gaiters
Clean and inspect all shaft parts
Paint all shaft parts
Inspect & service differential as needed
Reassemble all shafts with new u-joints, gaiters and Grade 8 fasteners while regreasing all splines
Replace wheel studs in hubs
Mount all componenets to chassis and rear suspension
The rear drive train consists of the propeller shaft (tranny to diff), differential (which houses the inner-half of the axle shafts), axle shafts (aka "drive shaft" or "half shaft", which consists of 3 separate pieces),
and finally the rear hubs. All of this is connected together using a combination of u-joints (6) and flanges. My goal was to clean-up all parts, replace the differential mounting bushings, replace the u-joints, replace the rubber gaiters
on the outer axle shafts and fix anything that I found wrong in the process. Little did I know that it would be in this part of the project where things would start to get challenging.
I started with the diff. After cleaning its exterior up a bit, I stood it up on the pinion flange on my workbench and left it overnight.
When I looked the next day, I noticed a small amount of oil had leaked out and pooled up. After seeing this, and corresponding with some of the folks
from the Triumph mailing list, I decided it was best to replace the front oil seal. Well, this brought up the challenge of how to remove the large castle nut
that keeps the front drive flange secured to the pinion shaft. Fortunately, Bill has quite a lot of scrap metal lying around the shop so I was able to fashion me a holding bar to keep the drive flange from turning while I broke the nut.
Once the nut was off I was able to pull everything off the front and get to the seal, which came off with a seal puller tool and a lot of elbow grease.
After replace the seal and adding the drive flange back on, I removed the rear cover for a visual inspection and some cleaning. All looked well and the gears are rotating perfectly, so no work needed to be done within the diff itself, which pleased me greatly.
Once the rear cover was cleaned, it was resecured to the diff casing with new gaskets added. All that remained was to attach the mouting pieces (2 pieces, one for front, the other rear, that resemble "Mickey Mouse" ears).
Once this was finished I put the diff away until it was ready to remount to the chassis.
Next I turned my attention to the drive shafts, which I unfortunately ruined by some over-exuberant cleaning. (see "Mistakes & Set-Backs")
Once I obtained a replacement set of shafts from Ted Schumacher of TS Imports I was ready to get to work.
The first thing I did was to remove the 4 u-joints (2 from each side) that held the assembly together. This caused each half to separate into 4 pieces; the diff joining flange, the female shaft, the male shaft and the outer shaft with the wheel hub still attached. (I had no need to remove or service the hubs)
These were cleaned with a wire wheel and the splines cleaned with a parts washer. I then masked off the u-joint holes and the near-end of the male shaft and painted them flat black.
I then put the hubs in the parts washer and got those reasonably clean. Once the paint had dried, I replaced the u-joints with brand new "Hardy Spicer" joints that I got as a complete kit from TRF.
Once the new u-joints were on I greased up the now shiny splines and assembled the two halves together, adding the rubber gaiters, both of which I used black tie wraps to secure.
The final thing I did was to replace the wheel studs in the hubs with new ones, since some of mine where badly stripped.
The last piece to recondition was the propeller shaft. Much like the drive shafts, the first thing I did was to remove the 2 u-joints which broke the assembly into 4 pieces (tranny joining flange, Short female shaft, long male shaft and diff joining flange).
These were all cleaned with a wire wheel and the splines cleaned in the parts cleaner. After masking, all parts were painted flat black. Next step was reassembling the assembly by adding two new u-joints, greasing up the splines and adding male to female,
being sure to line up the arrows since, unlike the drive shafts, the tranny shafts are not keyed.
Now that all the individual pieces were reconditioned, it was time to put it all together. First step was to add the propeller shaft to the differential by joining the flanges together.
This was accomplished using the bolts and nyloc bolts from the TRF U-joint kit. These were torqued up on the workbench and the whole assembly was wheeled over to the chassis.
I had a hell of a time getting the differential to mount on the chassis. For one, my two rear pin's threads were partially stipped. Second, the poly bushings I had purchased were hard and did not compress as much as I would have liked.
The end result was I had to do some creative thinking to get the diff on. (see "Mistakes & Set-Backs") One thing I noticed was that I had to "nose-up" the front of the diff to get the front pins through the mounting holes before
I had a prayer of getting the rear to line up. I ended up doing the front mounts first, but loosely, then the rear. Once the rear was done I readdressed the front, being sure to leave the front slightly lower than the rear to keep oil in the pinion.
Then, after adding a reconditioned rear brake assembly to each trailing arm, I slipped the drive shaft through the boss in each arm and secured the inner drive flange to the diff mating flange (4 nuts & bolts per side) and the hub mounting plate to the trailing arm studs (6 nuts each side).
Disaster soon struck when I realized that my clever diff mounts were slanted. After backing off the nut and making it right, I soon discovered that I had stripped the last portions of the good threads.
So, I had to remove all that I had put on in order to send the chassis back to Rick to have new diff pins added. Oh, the wretchedness and heartache!!
The content of this page in intended only to communicate my own thoughts, actions and opinions while restoring my own automobile.
It is not meant to serve as instruction for others to do maintenance on their vehicles.
