Well, the brakes hadn’t felt right in the last month. Sure enough, the small weep on the left output flange of the diff had become a full on leak. The disc was was nicely lubricated by gear oil!
I’d ordered a new pair of seals and a new set of brake pads. I’d also ordered some steel to make a new thrust collar as I know they are NLA.
Today I pulled the output flange assembly off the diff. I’d bought a puller set that was similar to the original rover tool. Predictably it did nothing and turned itself into a banana in the process. So much for amazon Chinese-ium.
The Rover manual mentioned that early collars with no groove could be turned off on the lathe. So off to my machine shop in the city, when there I set it up on lathe and turned off the old collar. (First pic)
The second pic shows the dismantled flange assembly.
Third pic shows the remains of the collar. It was so tight on there I could only remove it when it was down to this.
I turned a new collar in 12L14 steel following dimensions from a drawing from the Rover Car Club of Canada. Only thing missing from their drawing was a lead in chamfer. I’ll post my updated drawing when I’m on a proper PC and not my phone. Final pic shows the new collar in place after assembling the new seal.
No wonder the old one leaked, it was hard like bakerlite and actually shattered when I removed it.
Then the drive home (another 40 mins, yay) and a battle royale getting the driveshaft bolts lined up and secured. Total time for all the work: 10 hours. But I know it’s fixed, new pads and brakes feel great again and no leaks when I got back from the late night test drive. Job done and I’m now watching Star Trek with a pint.