Hilux MK6 Chassis and Rear Tub

[arther dailey]

What most people don't realise is that the Defender chassis steel is only 1.6mm thick if I recall.

interesting . still prefer C section as its easier to protect from the dreaded rot.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Well, it's coming, I have got it apart, drained the diff, popped the knackered driveshaft out, and reinstalled a new one...

Unfortunately the ball joint is knackered, but it's taper is thoroughly seized.

Given I'm having to fix it on the only flat residential street near my house, I have to call it for the night I think.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Given that rust never sleeps... Neither could I.

Had a moment of realisation that because all the parts of a ball joint are heat treated for tensile strength, they wouldn't actually be glass-hard, and a bimetal hacksaw blade would cut them.

Hacksawing is pretty quiet, right?

So it's hey, hey, my, my, into the black...

And thirty minutes and two hacksaw blades later... We're outta the blue [Hilux]

Then all it took was a bit of a tickle with a Thrasher and I've reclaimed the part.

The thrasher in question was a 20 lb strikers hammer, and I was seriously concerned I was going to crack the workshop floor when it didn't come with the first blow...

The surfaces are a bit scarred up, so I will have to give them a gentle smoothing with a file before I go press the top of the old joint out...

But currently I have run out of both energy and Neil Young references, so it can wait for another day.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

They end up being much heavier to achieve the same end result. Also I don't think they tend to like being twisted the way that box section does. It's amazing to see how much the chassis of say a 110 flexes when you cross-axle it properly and yet it just carries on.

Yeah, it becomes a very different set of engineering decisions.

If it's going to be made from sections with high levels of unidirectional rigidity, you need to design the whole frame to remain a rigid body in that plane... Because if it's almost rigid, that's just asking for fatigue failures.

You then have to find a way to take advantage of that rigidity to cut down on weight elsewhere, because the frame is now much heavier.

I suspect that to get comparable levels of performance at maximum articulation for an off-road vehicle, whilst still maintaining a fully rigid frame, live axles would be out of the question, and you'd be looking at something like Oleo-Struts (Hydro-pnuematic suspension in a sliding pillar configuration)...

Interesting conceptually, but all very expensive compared to more common technology.

The tooling also gets ridiculous - look at Topsy from Edison Motors, their prototype logging lorry. Living in the rust belt of Canada meant that Chase wanted a single skinned C section chassis rather than two C sections welded together, nowhere in Canada had a press-brake big enough to bend up the channel required so it had to be farmed out to somewhere in the US. It ended up being quite a bit heavier than the double skinned variants if I recall but for him the benefits far outweighed it due to the amount of salt on the roads there.

The Edison motors project has been pretty spectacular to date, they're not compromising at all on what they identified in their requirements phase.

In terms of the tooling, that seems like more of a prototyping problem...

In full-scale production it would make more sense to contract with a steel mill specialising in long products, but obviously the minimum order volume needed to support custom rolling would be significant.

 

[sako243]

In terms of the tooling, that seems like more of a prototyping problem...

True but I think they said there was one place in the US that had the capability so not that many options.

I think they're switching tack though and not really bothering with fully custom trucks - focusing rather more sensibly on retrofits.

 

[arther dailey]

Well, it's coming, I have got it apart, drained the diff, popped the knackered driveshaft out, and reinstalled a new one...

Unfortunately the ball joint is knackered, but it's taper is thoroughly seized.

Given I'm having to fix it on the only flat residential street near my house, I have to call it for the night I think.

View attachment 471441

View attachment 471442

you did well

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

I regret my decisions.

Had I left the knackered one in place I could just about have limped to a garage and made it their problem.

Currently the pressed in ball joint will not come out, and has trashed my ball joint press trying.

Options are:

- take the wishbone out and take it to my mates house to use a hydraulic press, or

- lug my oxy propane down and try to pierce it and burn out enough that the remainder shrinks and can be drifted out.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

I regret my decisions.

Had I left the knackered one in place I could just about have limped to a garage and made it their problem.

Currently the pressed in ball joint will not come out, and has trashed my ball joint press trying.

Options are:

- take the wishbone out and take it to my mates house to use a hydraulic press, or

- lug my oxy propane down and try to pierce it and burn out enough that the remainder shrinks and can be drifted out.

Or take the driveshaft back out and go get a sledgehammer in a last ditch attempt to avoid doing anything really drastic.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

The ball joint press is apparently just a piece of crap, the clamp portion racked, causing the press tool to deform and in turn muller the replacement ball joint.

Fortunately I did have a spare (intended for the other side, which will have to be done next week) so was able to do it the old fashioned way.

I really did need that big thor hammer though.

Just reassembly, and replacing the boots on the other side to go now...

Simples?

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Just add torque and I can move over to sorting the CV Boot on the other side.

Interestingly, from the factory the bolts I lost one of come pre-coated with medium strength threadlock.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

So inspecting the other side, it's basically just the CV Boot clip having popped, the ball joint is aged but not damaged to the extent that the other side was, and the CV didn't loose grease, so I can just whack a clip on for now.

I'll refurbish the driveshaft I removed yesterday in the workshop when I have time and just do a straight swap out when I do the ball joint on the driver's side.

I just need to drop the missus off at a hen do and find the little 12V oil pump so I can refill the diff, and job will be an good adequate traumatic one.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

The clips supplied are the awful tension style ones, rather than the gigantic adjustable O-clip style, I don't have the tool, not would I want to keep them, so I'm going to chuck a huge zip tie on for tonight to get it out of the road then go buy a set of proper clips from the auto factors tomorrow.

FFS

Edit: Double FFS run out of large zip ties.

 

[Beanwood]

The clips supplied are the awful tension style ones, rather than the gigantic adjustable O-clip style, I don't have the tool, not would I want to keep them, so I'm going to chuck a huge zip tie on for tonight to get it out of the road then go buy a set of proper clips from the auto factors tomorrow.

FFS

Edit: Double FFS run out of large zip ties.

Two smaller ones connected together to get you by?

 

[bert]

I've got the propper tool to fit those cv clips and even with perfectly clean parts easy access and what appear to be perfect crimps they end up leaking or coming off

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Two smaller ones connected together to get you by?

I've run out of all the big wide ones that will take the tension needed unfortunately.

Ultimately I got super lucky to not get any grease loss or contamination, so no point chancing it and ruining the one bit of good luck I did have.

I've got the propper tool to fit those cv clips and even with perfectly clean parts easy access and what appear to be perfect crimps they end up leaking or coming off

This is exactly why I won't fit that type as more than a stop gap, especially not because I will end up immersing the CV's from time to time.

Trying to install the one I had with the "trick" of tensioning them by twisting them round a pair of needle nose pliers, caused it to snap well before it got to an acceptable tightness.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

It lives!

I ordered some CV "ear clamps" on Amazon [shudders] last night and they turned up this morning, got everything reassembled, rechecked the torques, and refilled the diff.

The 12V oil pump did not enjoy pumping 75W90 gear oil, but the principle is great, I will have to find a better pump.

Just drove to Halfrauds, rechecked the torques, and replaced a track rod end split pin because I'd run out of that size and reused the previous one reassembling.

Unsurprisingly it drives quite a bit better now (even comparing to when the wheel was attached).