Ron’s LC79 gets new diffs, axles, bearings, housings and more

The 79 Cruiser has had a hard time over the last eight months, crossing the Simpson three times along the acclaimed Madigan Line, doing two Coast to Coast trips from Ceduna in South Australia to Pardoo Station on the Indian Ocean, and then completing two Cape York trips that not only saw the OTL track each time, but also the Starke River track, Frenchman’s Track and the Old Coach Road from Laura to Maytown.

In-between those jaunts were the intervening kilometres along gravel roads linking start and finish points, and while they weren’t difficult they still add to the wear and tear the vehicle is subject to.

There would be few vehicles in Australia doing as many hard four-wheel drive kilometres as this rig. As you’d expect, such distances and the wear and tear of these tough iconic tracks comes at a price.

Once we started looking, the mechanical carnage was more dramatic than what we had first envisaged. One of the diff breathers had let go somewhere along the line and had let a slurry of water and mud into the rear diff, destroying axle bearings and the housing, allowing the bearing to spin inside the axle housing.

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There was so much carnage to the diff, axles and axle housing that we decided to bite the bullet and replace the whole lot with a Multidrive Technology heavy-duty diff housing that corrects the anomaly between the track width between front and rear axles.

This engineer-approved mod includes dedicated longer heavy-duty axles with a GVM upgrade, if fitted with the properly approved spring pack. We opted for a Terrain Tamer parabolic spring pack which took the GVM up to 3780kg, while other TT spring packs can take your GVM up to 3950kg.

The front diff wasn’t much better; the CV joints and axle shaft assemblies, along with the swivel housing bearings and seals, were showing definite signs of wear and tear. We blamed the slurry you often plough through when on a Cape York trip, or when you splash through a long mud puddle in the desert, for that wear and tear.

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We replaced all these shafts, bearings and seals with Terrain Tamer kits and bearings. All the bearings in the TT Cruiser kits are made in Japan, have a Rockwell hardness rating 2.5 points higher than the OE bearings, and are designed and manufactured for a longer service life. The seals are also the very best you can get, with improved sealing surfaces and construction to prevent oil loss and protect against ingress of unwanted substances.

We also replaced the front and rear brake rotors and their pads, again using Terrain Tamer’s extensive parts list that cover every eventuality. While repairing the brakes, we replaced the ABS wiring to the rear brakes; again this had been ripped out somewhere on our travels.

Staying under the vehicle, we replaced front radius arm bushes and sway bar bushes all around, while running a TT diff breather kit to each diff. This brings the breather outlet up to the top of the engine firewall and will offer some safeguard against water and slurry ingress.

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Once we had finished at Terrain Tamer’s workshop, we headed over to our normal service centre, Outback 4WD in Bayswater, Vic, and had the rig serviced with new engine oil, oil filters and fuel filters. While the vehicle was up on the hoist, I got the crew to fit a De-Bug filter to the fuel system. I’ve had one of these units our Patrol for years and they – in varying sizes – are often fitted to big diesel engines in ships and trucks.

The De-Bug unit contains a series of magnets which the fuel flows through and which kills any bacteria, yeast and fungus that can exist in diesel fuel and block up your normal fuel filter. There are a number of these different bugs that can exist in fuel and all are referred to as Hydrocarbon Utilising Micro-organisms (HUM-bugs), and while that name may seem a little cute, what they do is anything but.

Anyway, having proven the worth of these units in the Patrol, I wanted one fitted to the Cruiser. This was a pretty simple job, with more time and effort going in to finding a spot that was close to the original fuel line and somewhere where the De-Bug unit was protected from flying rocks and the like. As it was, a small protection plate had to be fitted to ensure the unit was out of harm’s way.

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As you may suspect, the tyres have had a hard time during these forays where, for nearly all the way, we are towing an AOR Sierra camper trailer. To get over the desert dunes, tyre pressures were pretty low on both the tow tug and the trailer, and I’d be lying if I said we didn’t suffer any sidewall damage.

That being said, with more than 40,000km on this set of six Mickey Thompson tyres, we’re bloody happy with the way they have performed, both in the scrub and on the blacktop, and the small amount of trouble they have given us.

With all those repairs and service behind us, we’re hitting the road again soon. First to the desert country of north-western Victoria and then to the Victorian High Country for a couple of trips before heading into our vast western deserts and doing it all again.

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We’re confident the new diff housing and wider track at the rear will offer a more stable experience, especially in the creek crossings on Cape York when side angles can get extreme.

All-in-all we’re also expecting a little trouble from our revamped diffs and brake set-up. Time will tell!

More info

Multidrive Technology: https://multidrive.com.au
Terrain Tamer: www.terraintamer.com
Outback 4WD: www.outback4wd.com.au
De-Bug: www.morison.com.au
Mickey Thompson: www.mickeythompsontires.com.au