Hi all,
The other day, after a recent new year’s trip to a station in the southern flinders, I decided to investigate a possible air leak in the line connecting my front locker to the compressor. During recent operation, it was noticed that the compressor cycled quite frequently, indicating an air leak somewhere. Anyway, under the car I go and noticed oil underneath the front diff. On closer inspection, I found the rear half of the driver’s side radius arm bracket completely broken away from the axle housing! Not only had the bracket snapped in half, but several welds had failed and a small hole in the axle housing was also caused by a weld tearing away.
Now, I should reveal here that I drive a 100 series (105) live axle diesel. After dismantling everything, I decided it could be easily fixed by making a suitable jig to hold everything in it’s correct place and rewelding. This worked a treat and saved me big bucks. However, I also felt the need to add some additional reinforcing and gussets to make sure it won’t happen again.
Close inspection of the passenger side bracket revealed that the weld along the gusset on the top of the bracket had also failed and another weld down along the axle housing on one side was also starting to crack. Therefore, this side was also rewelded and reinforced.
While I don’t always treat the car as gently as I perhaps should, I’m not into extreme rockhopping either. On the side that actually broke, it was very evident that the weld along the top gusset had virtually nil penetration to the axle housing and was only ever holding by maybe 5mm of weld (the rest of the bead was just sitting on the surface). I suspect this was the main cause of it eventually failing.
Ok, the truck has done 250k and has heavy duty King springs, but on making enquiries with both Toyota spare parts and a couple of wreckers (prior to deciding to fix my own), I was told that front diff/axle housings were a commonly sought after part. So it appears this may have been relatively common?? My fix cost me under $200 including all new seals throughout, new swivel hub bearings (which were stuffed also), plus a fair bit of my own time and labour of course.
By the way, the air leak that started all this was actually inside the diff as the small copper air line had rubbed through on the rotating internals – this is currently being fixed under warranty by the supplier as they are the one who fitted it in the first place.
The point of this (longwinded) post is to suss out who else may have had a similar problem and whether it was repaired successfully or replaced. For all of you 100 series live axle drivers, perhaps a
check now and again may save you some pain. I’m just glad it didn’t happen on the CSR!
Below are a couple of pics after repair and reinstallation (diff still to go in).
Cheers
Gerry