Good Job I had a stock of spare outer halfshafts!

The work to replace the wheel bearing and rebuild the halfshaft continued tonight. I had a bit of advice from two well respected Triumph aficionados who suggested that it was better to have a bit of pre-load on the bearing and to leave well alone now I had come up with zero end float. However, the fact that the larger distance piece and 5 thou spacer arrived in the post today I thought I’d give setting up another go. Probably just as well as I ended up adding another 6 thou of adjustment to get 1 thou of end float measured and verified with my DTI gauge. I would have had 5 thou of preload if I’d left the setting alone which I think would have been too much so I’m happy with the end float now.

Bearings were then greased, oil seal added and everything assembled with the replacement half shaft I’d selected from my “good” 2nd hand spares. Except it turned out not to be a good half shaft after all, despite the fact that I drifted the assembly fully together first to save too much drawing the bearing down with the shaft and the thread on the shaft looked good it stripped before I got to the required tightening torque.

Damn It!

I then had to strip out the shaft, remove the big block spacer, dust cover disc and rotoflex coupling and build up another shaft. I picked what I considered to be the next best shaft, it looked good except there was a slight taper on the last few threads which is why I had demoted it to 2nd place. However on reassembly I torqued down the halfshaft nut to the top end of the 90-120 lb/ft setting, I used loctite thread lock, even more essential with the tapering of the end of the treads making the nyloc of the nut pretty much useless on the thicker than standard nuts that seem to be the only ones you can get hold of nowadays.

Essential addition, Loctite Threadlock due to the thicker than original halfshaft nuts now supplied by Triumph Specialists.

Torque wrench is essential to ensure the right Torque as it's bloody tight, 90 - 120 ft/lb

I was hoping to get everything ready for refitting the halfshaft to the car tomorrow night but the replacement of the stripped halfshaft lost me quite a bit of time. I’ll reassemble the inner halfshaft to the rotoflex tomorrow, build up the brake shoe assembly and replace the hub tomorrow night and start refitting the halfshaft on Thursday night. Hopefully everything will be fully back together overt the weekend and I can re-submit it for MOT next week. Unfortunately this will be past the 10 working day re-test limit and with the new computerised MOT system it will have to be a full test rather than a re-test. The MOT will also have run out by then so no legal way to road test the car until I’m on my way to the test station although I’ll no doubt run it around the block carefully before then.