Preamble

It’s been a while… Time to finish cleaning the component parts, make a small repair and reassemble the MAP hubs.

Cleaning, facing and detailing

There was a lot of salt corrosion and paint on the hubs which needed to be removed. I carefully chucked the parts in the lathe and machined off just enough material to remove the corrosion and paint.

Face plate before
Face plate after. It was further polished with the scotchbrite disc

The same approach was taken with the main shell and oil filler screw. A word of caution when machining the face of the hub shell, you only want to remove enough material to create a smooth face. To remove too much will effect the stack height, and therefore the operation of the hub.

Before
After
Before
After. The slot was cleaned out using a small machinists file.

The same process was carried out on the selector cap. With the parts cleaned up, I painted the text with some RAL 3020. The easiest way to do this is paint over everything, let it cure and remove the paint on the face of the lettering with a sharp Stanley blade. This leaves the letters in relief of the surrounding material.

Face plate and selector boss before painting
Face plate and selector boss, cleaning and painted.

Repairing the selector ring

I noticed that one of the pins in the selector ring was missing but was able to make a new one on the lathe. This would originally have been a hardened steel pin, pressed into the selector ring (also hardened) and peened from the rear. The two pins are not the same diameter so the other selector ring was used as a reference point.

Missing pin
Chicken sketch diagram of what I need
Using a scrap piece of stainless hex stock, I made a new pin
The hole in the end is to allow it to be peened over
Pin pressed into the ring with some stud lock
New pin 🙂
Pin was left oversized deliberately to allow the end to be matching flat with the ring
Pin now machine flush with the ring
Last job was to peen the end (as best I could) to prevent it from coming out
Selector ring, now with both pins, installed on the selector boss

Reassembly

With all of the small parts cleaned and repaired, it was time to reassembly both hubs. It’s pretty straight forwards requiring nothing more technical that a pair of circlip pliers, some oil and the service kit with the new gaskets and seals. The service kit is available from Land Rover Optional Equipment in the UK.

It’s worthing stating that the bronze bush in the hub shell was in very good condition. There was still a good precise fit with the hub body. This is not pat of the service kit.

#1: Insert hub body into hub shell

Hub body is secured with a circlip and is inserted from the front of the hub shell
Hub body fitted as viewed from the rear of the hub shell. (The sight distortion in the picture is oil)

#2: Fitting pawls, springs and lock ring. (springs are part of the service kit).

Pawl and new spring. These can be a bit fiddly. The notch on the left is to be installed innermost at the top.
Push the spring down first and gently ease the pawl into position.
It’s very important the spring is set horizontally.
All 4 pawls back in place and selector ring installed. The hub is now in “engaged” mode.
Next fit the lock ring. This is held in place by some drive screws. These are punched in (lightly). It’s also a good idea to lock these in place with some stud lock.
Hub centre, pawls, springs, selector ring and lock ring installed.

#3 Face plate and centre boss

Unfortunately, I did not take any photos of this step. It simply requires a seal to be installed in the groove on the selector boss and another in the groove on the inside of the face plate.

The hubs I bought still had the original leather seal in the face plate and was rock hard. I machine it out on the lathe but using a sharp pointy implement and some patience would achieve the same results.

Hubs are now ready to fit.