Free play in halfshaft / drive flange.

[Paul]

Had a slack day at work today so I got the motor on the ramps and repacked all the wheel bearings,
When finishing one of the rear ones I noticed that there was free play on either the halfshaft end or in the drive shaft flange,
It's got 24 spline shafts so the flange is sperate to the half shaft.
Should there be play in them ?
You can move the road wheel clockwise and anti-clockwise about 2" you can see the halfshaft turning but the flange stays still.

[Budgie]

The drive flanges do ware Paul, I replaced both my front ones about 6 months ago and it does take out some of, what I thought was, backlash in the drive train.

They aren't that expensive so if you've got movement in the flange then it's worth doing.  

[Paul]

Can you remember how much you paid for them ?

[LOFTY]

On my 130 i changed the drive flange and the halfshafts, as they were both badly worn. :?

[Skywalker]

We recently replaced the rear flanges and half shafts on my son's 110 and the difference was very noticeable, lot less "Clunk" and much nicer to drive, for the rear (from memory) Paddock's  do the rear drive shafts for less than £20 a side and the flanges at about £9.50 (ish) each. .............  (Plus the dreaded)

Dave

[Range Rover Blues]

You can live with that I hope, very reasonable.  Unfortuantely the wear in the outer ends is mirrored by wear at the diff end and this is harder to fix.

[Mace]

I know a 300tdi has fix flanges to half shafts so I can't comment on my rear play, but if the 200 tdi rear set up is the same as my 300 tdi front hubs then I can say without a doubt, replace the drive flanges.

I replaced mine (£7.60+VAT) from www.land-rover-parts-shop.com and it took out 80% of the play in my front end half shafts. Well happy. They also sell genuine ones too if you want to be generous :-)

[Henry Webster]

From my experience the diff end does not wear anything like as fast as the flange end.  Worth replacing.  I have rarely seen the splines fail on the diff end, but regularly seen the flange fail.

H

[davidlandy]

replaced my front ones the other month, surprising how much difference they made.

cost about £20 each