Close up of the failed bearing on our Landrover on the road near Strandakirkja

Landrover Maintenance

I crawled out of bed and off to work. Well, actually we started with breakfast, and then set off on our mission to fix the rear axle problems on our Series IIA Landrover. Needed to adjust the bearings on the truck we went in before we left, so I am now learning rather a lot about wheel bearings on cars.

Got to Hella without a problem and found the donor Landrover right away. We did not have the right tools to remove the part we needed though, so we had to drive into Hella to a garage to see if we could get a spanner that fitted the UK size nuts. The shop was shut for lunch, so we had to wait about and eat a hot dog. When the shop eventually re-opened, they did not have the correct spanner either. Damn imperial sized nuts. The bloke in the next garage told us we would be able to knock the casting off the axle with a chisel. The rear axle was really goo-ed up with rust and half buried, so we foolishly took the one from the front axle and assumed it would fit. Duh! what a mistake. We drove for 1.5 hours to the Landrover and immediately discovered the part we had did not fit.

Close up of the failed bearing on our Landrover on the road near Strandakirkja

We re-examined the old part, but it really was as useful as a rubber screwdriver. Tom and Andy were spied right out to sea, in the surf. We just turned back to Hella, leaving them to their fun. It was a real challenge to get the casting off the axle of the donor. We got the bolts off without too much of a problem, but the casting just would not come off. Eventually, we lifted the back of the vehicle with a tractor front loader, and took the other end of the axle off too. A good smashing with a piece of scaffold pole through the axle did the trick. We had brought the damaged casting with us this time, and we had a perfect match. The half shaft was not the same though, correct length,  but wrong number of splines. Eventually, after coffee and cake at the most untidy farm I have ever seen, we were off back to Strandakirkja.

Arrived back at the Landrover by 8pm, and 1½ hours later we had the bearing back in and the axle reassembled.  We did not have the energy to bleed the brakes, so Andy had to do a lot of brake peddle pumping on the drive back to Reykjavík. We crawled back into town narrowly missing death as Andy mis-understood the priority at a set of traffic lights. In bed by midnight.