Range Rover front diff in a Series?

[scott]

...109 front brakes have two leading shoes which gives it good braking in the forward direction and really poor braking in the rearwards direction. Mostly you don't need good brakes in the rearwards direction...

teri, what do you think of fitt'n 109 front brakes on an 88? i plan on doing a bit of trailering. is it easy? worth the hassle/expense?

[yorker]

teri, what do you think of fitt'n 109 front brakes on an 88? i plan on doing a bit of trailering. is it easy? worth the hassle/expense?

It used to be a fairly popular modification. Very simple to do once you have accumulated the parts.

[siiirhd88]

Disc Brake Axles

I have early 10 spline Range Rover disc brake axles under the wife's SIIA 109. The rear was easy, just cutting off all of the coil bits and welding on generic 3" tube spring perches at the desired pinion angle.

The front axle was more of a problem, as previously discussed. Unlike a Series, the RR axles have the steering arms on the rear side of the swivel housings. The location of the arms causes the tie rod to interfere with the leaf springs. By using two leaf parabolic springs, different thicknesses of spacers on each side and wedge pinion angle shims between the axle and springs I was able to get the heavy duty RTE tie rod to just clear the springs. The wedge shims allowed adjustment of the castor, but the castor and pinion angle is a compromise that fortunately has worked out fine. I used 88 rear shock mounting plates to mount the lower end of the front shocks.

The spacers and axle location caused a loss of some ground clearance, but that has not been a problem so far.

Since the wife's 109 is RHD I had to source a RHD RR swivel to mount the drag link from the steering relay. The drag link tube ended up needing to be shorter than the RR one, but longer than the Series. I had a machine shop shorten, drill and tap a RTE RR drag link to the correct size.

I might play around with moving the tie rod to the front side, since with RHD and LHD swivels now have steering arms up front. Using a tie rod with a drag link connection would eliminate the spring interference.

I did add small rubber wheel arch flares to the wings due to the tires on Disco steel wheels sticking out slightly. I kept the 3.54 ratio gears, and the 3.9 V8 and R380 5 speed make it a great cruiser. I used a stock 109 vacuum assist brake master cylinder and booster. The braking has been excellent, compared to stock drums.

I had bought the axles just for the 3.54 10 spline diffs, which I intended to put in my 3.9 V8 SIII 88. I will likely modify a pair of S1 Disco axles for the wife's 109 later...

Bob
'96 Disco SE7
'80 SIII 109
'75 SIII 88 V8
'68 SIIA 109 V8
'6? SIIA 109