Land Rover Discovery Suspensions: Caster

[ntsqd]

snip......

And why the bit of weldery on the top of the kingpin?

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It is the Trac-bar's (panhard bar etc.) attachment point. You can almost see it behind the drag link in this pic:

 

[michaelgroves]

Oh yeah, I see it. It's getting kinda crowded around there!

 

[Lars70]

Re-welding sounds like it must have been fun too! Making the jig must have been a big job. How accurate was the result?

And why the bit of weldery on the top of the kingpin?

View attachment 24952

Actually, with clean metal, it was silly easy to weld. We used a stick, but if I was doing it again I'd probably just run the MIG with fat wire and some preheat. Which is how Dana built them in the first place.

In the end, less than 0.2 degrees variation from side to side, and that was eyeballing two long rods to make sure they were parallel. I wouldn't have believed we could get it that close, except that we did. It's been to a couple of alignment shops since then, both came back with the same numbers. Not too bad considering that that particular Dana 44 was over a degree off from side to side before we commenced cutting. Another reason for my disparaging remarks in my first post. Back in the early 70's the quality control on some of the axle stuff wasn't the best. Not that it would break, just that it wasn't put together with the greatest of accuracy.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Actually, with clean metal, it was silly easy to weld. We used a stick, but if I was doing it again I'd probably just run the MIG with fat wire and some preheat. Which is how Dana built them in the first place.

In the end, less than 0.2 degrees variation from side to side, and that was eyeballing two long rods to make sure they were parallel. I wouldn't have believed we could get it that close, except that we did. It's been to a couple of alignment shops since then, both came back with the same numbers. Not too bad considering that that particular Dana 44 was over a degree off from side to side before we commenced cutting. Another reason for my disparaging remarks in my first post. Back in the early 70's the quality control on some of the axle stuff wasn't the best. Not that it would break, just that it wasn't put together with the greatest of accuracy.

It's surprising not that hard to do a decent job aligning things if you're really careful. I do alignment jobs with string in my own garage that are better than than you'll get from a shop with a lazer gauge most of the time. Those places only care about getting it "in spec" which is usually +/-1° on many things. Sure, the instrument is accurate, but the user doesn't use it's full capability.

 

[Yorker]

From your description it sounds like the Discovery's front suspension is very similar to the early Bronco's- what I suspected, but since I've never seen one, I wasn't sure. The issues you describe are the same ones I've been through with my Bronco as I've evolved the suspension over the 13 years I've owned it..

Land Rover supposedly used a Bronco front end when they were experimenting with coilers in the late 1960's. They later claimed they didn't like how it worked, but they said that about a lot of other maker's stuff...

Here I don't know if this helps anyone but I had this Ford stuff on my hard drive: