Your arms sound like they have single washer and not double.In that case no need to add anouther washer if you use polys only if original spongey ones are used.Axle cups should be attatched to axle by four spot welds unless they have rotted off.In the picture the axle cups are visable as they are not welded onto axle yet.Keep going !i know it aint easy but you well get there in the end.Just dont skin your knuckles in this weather ,that aint nice.Regards JJ
ps good coat of waxoyl or even better Dynawax(Bilt Hamber Labs)when your done should help to keep it all nice.

.
.
Hello Chris,

chris_derby wrote:

What extra washer? There's no extra washer on my axle or on the trailiong arms. Thats because it was a dealership retrofit IF the torque tube cross member caused noise at its mounting bushes. The geometric solution was quite innovative because the EXTRA washer pushed the brackets further aft having the effect of lowering the front end of the torque tube substantially and increasing the distance between the cross member and car body. I cant locate the original reference at this time but I seem to remember that extra washers could also be added between the cross member its bushes to further enhance this noise reduction modification. No axle cups either, There were mild steel axle cups on cars when they left the factory but unless the car has been meticulously maintained with waterproofing etc, they will have rusted away. but there seems to be 2 washers welded to the axle where the trailing arms passes through... That would be by some creative but unwise prior owner who could not find any cups to replace the rusted ones and welded the two washers to the brackets to "centre" the trailing arm on the bracket. The downside would be a propensity to dramatically increase wear on the trailing arm shaft if/when the bushes wear or go soft. An accident waiting to happen I'm afraid.

The bottom line is that the cups were there to centre the bushes, and the hole in the axle bracket was large enough NOT to cause wear in the trailing arms providing the bushes and cups remained OK.

To add protection Rover had a plastic/nylon tube over the shaft but methinks it simply trapped water over the years and encouraged corrosion.

When rebuilding the back end these days - go for replacement cups and load of waxoyl protection AND the nylon tube, and do regular inspections for wear/corrosion.

Thanks for that Ramon, have got one side sorted, but am going to have to wait till I get another trailing arm to do the other side. As for the welded on washers, I'm going to get another rear axle this year & rebuild it, so the washers will stay on for now....

If people have bothered enough to get axle cups remade... why cant they just straight away get them pressed out of acid resistant stainless steel? Cant cost that much more.

It snapped on the thread

Stainless welds just fine to mild steel... no problem in that. Infact... people who "stick" weld prefer to use always stainless steel rods because their the best to weld and make a strong seam.

Regarding the snapped trailing arm link, that would surely take some force, so if they were part of the suppliers recent acqusition its possible there was a latent manufacturing defect.

It would certainly be worth while mentioning to them that if it had NOT snapped under installation there could have been a safety issue to contend with - might get one a "without predudice" free replacement or at the very least a big discount.

Mind you, home mechanics on that sort of thing probably would frighten insurance companies off underwriting us at all. - what what?

Thanks Ramon, I was going to call Rimmers tomorrow morning & speak to them. I would imagine it would take a whole lot of force to snap the thread on a trailing arm, but it didn't takethat much force to snap the one I was installing, so I can only assume there was a defect in the thread...

It's certainly a bit concerning having a trailing arm snap during
installation - they should not do this! Rimmers are pretty helpful
if you speak to the right person, and I'd imagine they'd be
interested in examining the broken arm to see if there are others
that may snap. You've got me worried now - I've got ex-India
trailing arms on my Vitesse

ramon alban wrote:

Chris, the ones I got from Doug were SS with four holes on a pitch circle for attaching by rivets. I'd had them in the workshop for 5 years before fitting them to the TP in 2006. However what I did was drill out the holes a bit more and countersink them with a regular csk bit, then plug welded them into place, the four plugs were then ground off flat with the inner surface of the cup. One could see that the weld integrity was good so they are not going anywhere whilst under compression considering how much sheer force it would take to break those four big plug welds in each cup.

This sounds the way to go - SS cups and plug welded to the axle
brackets. Hopefully this information is getting passed on to Rimmer's
by Doug and we will get SS axle cups.

ramon alban wrote:

I believe the original cups were spot welded and mine had evidence of only four small spots so they were probable less secure than my SS ones.

I can see no evidence whatsoever there were ever cups on my Vitesse's
axle. But I can well imagine complete disintegration of the cups over
20 years, along with surface rusting of the axle bracket would hide signs
of the cups

Luckily most finnish cars have their undersides rust proofed at early age so my axle had its cups left

sorry to jump in here and show my ignorance , but where are these axle cups being talked about? which part number are they from here

Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum!

thanks