Busy with work, holiday and now some vehicle maintenance. Still sorting out the springs on the 130. Will post more on that one a little later. Main problem with the Defender 130 Station Wagon is a real bad oil leak. The EP 80/90 oil is leaking via the intermediate shaft out of the LT230 transfer box. The unit has been reconditioned 35.000km back by a professional company….
I do expect the o-ring seal on the intermediate shaft to be broken and searching on the Internet revealed it to be a common problem. It should be an “easy repair” but the only way to get to this rubber seal is by taking out the transfer box of the vehicle and dismantle it! So it’s actually a lot of work!
As I do have two other LT230 units on the shelf I’ve decided to recondition one of the boxes by myself! OK I’m not novice to gearboxes, reconditioned two Series 3 gearboxes back in the nineties.
As it is difficult to take a picture of the actual leak I’ve edited the image below. The red circle on the left is the intermediate shaft. The right circle is the input gear / shaft and connecting to the main gearbox, a LT77.
The first image is the oil leak of the LT230 fitted to the vehicle right now, second image is the serial number with suffix ‘E’ and another engraving which might be a referrer to a previous reconditioning of this transfer box. This actual unit is 1992. The third image, the complete box dismantled into pieces. The fourth image a close up of the gears, on the left the intermediate gears + shaft. On the right the main shaft with differential.
My next step is ordering all new bearings, seals, gaskets and some small bits and pieces. The most difficult of the full reconditioning job is to get the bearing pre loads right. Main shaft & intermediate shaft. Special tools are needed which I don’t have.
