The removal and replacement of a front differential and the associated halfshafts, CV jointa etc, should be fairly straightforward.
That is unless, there's damage involved. It requires only basic tools, and a few hours to do.
Obviously, this being the law of landrovers, it was not to be quite so easy for me. I'd had an incident on a greenlaning trip, where I'd
lost drive because of a problem with the fron axle. Having already taken the front prop off to nurse the poor thing home, I next set about stripping out the front axle to find
out what was wrong and to repair it.
First step is jack up the 110, stick an axle stand under one side of the axle and pull the road wheel off. Next, off came the caliper
being very careful with the brake pipe that feeds it. The caliper was safely clipped out of the way with a bungee, or some old electrical cable. Remove the circlip and washer
from the end of the halfshaft, remove the bolts holding the drive flange in place, and finally remove the drive falnge itself.
Now you presented with 2 large nuts, surrounding a tab washer which should have been bent over each of the nuts holding the hub assembly in place. Using a small chisel,
carefully bend back the tab over the outer nut. Then you'll need a hub nut spanner to remove the outer hub nut. Slide the tab washer off the stub axle, and finally use the
hub nut spanner to remove the inner hub nut. Now you should be able to carefully remove the entire hub assembly complete with the hub bearings from the stub axle.
There are now 6 bolts holding the stub axle to the swivel housing, which along with the mudshield, need to be removed. You may need to tap a chisel into the gap between
the stub axle and swivel housing to break it free, but be careful not to use too much force.
Now you can see inside the swivel housing, and should be able to slide out the outer halfshaft / CV assembly and inner halfshaft as one unit and place them to one side.
Unfortunately, this is where I hit a problem. The near side halfshafts had all slid out very easily. The off side weren't shifting...
I tried getting some mole grips on the outer half shaft, and wiggling it, twisting it, tapping it with a hammer. Nothing worked, it wouldn't shift. OK, try a big hammer and hit it really hard. Damn, the CV joint separates
very neatly from the inner halfshaft (just like it's supposed to), and now I'm left with about an inch of inner shaft that I can get too easily. Reclamped the mole
grips on to the end of the inner shaft and hit them again. Bent mole grips. Looking like Plan B.
Plan B involves unbolting the steering arms from the swivel housing, and then using a spanner and a length of tube, unbolting the whole swivel housing from the end of the axle tube.
This is much easier the stripping down the swivel housing, and then having to reset the swivel preloads etc. Off comes the swivel housing, and now we've got a nice length of inner shaft exposed to work on.
Tried the mole grip method again and the shaft still wasn't moving. Time to bring out the heavy guns... Cut a slot into the end of the shaft, just under half the way throught the shaft.
Then taking any old bit of thickish metal of some variety, insert it into the slot you've just cut, and weld it in place. Next take very big hammer and hit the bar you just welded in place very hard, knocking the shaft away from the vehicle.
It may take a few hits, but eventually the jammed shaft comes flying out. So now you've got both sets of shaft out of the diff.
Now it all gets easier again. I decided to change the diff anyway, as I'd retrieved a spare from another vehicle, to give me a chance to inspect the original diff. Undo the 10 or bolts
around the diff housing, and with a bit of a wiggle, the diff should slide out quite easily. Beware, it's heavy and awkward to support unless you can lie directly under it. Clean all the broken bits of shaft spline and whatnot
out of the diff housing. I swilled some clean EP90 around until it all seemed clean.
Then it's back to the old Haynes method of refitting is the the reverse of removal, hopefully without big hammers needed this time. Fill everything up with fresh oil / one shot grease in the swivels and you're ready to go.