Fitting QT Diff Guards to a TD5

[Ben]

Morning!

I've just spent the last hour under the 90 in the rain removing the diff pan guard, the steering guard ( no recovery point, and can't fit JATE rings with it) and the necessary bolts to fit QT diff guards front and rear, and the brackets don't fit properly.

Has anyone else fitting the QT guards to a TD5 - the front diff has different mouldings on to a 300Tdi by the looks of things so the bracket doesn't sit flush, and so doesn't reach the guard.
The rear on fouls the brake lines. On the 300Tdi, the brake pipe splitter thingy was bolted to the diff, and could be moved to allow the guard to fit, but on my 90 it's welded to the axle, and consequently looks a pain to move.

Any ideas? I'll give QT a bell in the morning, but it looks like I've either got the wrong brackets, or I'm doing something wrong :shock:

Cheers

Ben

[Guardian.]

did you buy it as a td5 guard or did you just buy a defender diff guard.

[Ben]

I bought both as TD5 guards... I take it they have different brackets?

Ben

[smo]

Diff guards on the TD5 are a pain, but not impossible to fit - it took 4 hours to get the front one on mine with the help of a hammer and angle grider to reshape the bracket.

The secret is to do everything up as loose as possible and bend it all into place then start cranking them up bit by bit and it pulls its self into shape.

[Ben]

I wondered if the brackets needed to be slightly different shape. I've marked the back one where it needs to be cut out, but I don't want to reduce the strength of the bracket.

I fitted the units to my previous 300TDi (front and rear), and they went on with a good bit of bending, but no cutting.

I'll see what QT say tomorrow - you'd have thought they'd have a TD5 specific bracket for the guards. After all, they're selling them as TD5 ones (unless I got thewrong ones, of course :D )

Cheers

Ben

[smo]

You shouldnt need to cut anything - the brake pipe union on the rear axle isnt welded on, or at least shouldnt be, its bolted through the top and you can undo this and flex it out the way when fitting the guards.

[littlepow]

I found if you pre bend the the bracket to match the contours of the diff case it fits without any trouble. The back requires the bracket fitting under the brake lines, and use the closest mounting hole to the diff. This will stop it rubbing your fuel tank. Apart from that, mine fitted first time, took about 40mins for the front and 30 mins to fit the rear.
As to jate rings, I cut to small segments out of either side of my steering guard to fit them. Has not weaken the guard and allows enough movement for the Jate rings to work.
Hope this helps.

[Ben]

QT have sent through the correct top mounts for the diff guards - they'd sent the 300TDi ones before. There's quite a bit of difference!

I'll try to remove the brake pipe union once the 90 comes back - both top mounts they've sent through are the same, so I'll need to do some extra bending and possibly some cutting otherwise. We'll see!

As far as the steering guard goes, I've bought one with integral recovery points as I felt this was a better solution than cutting through both of the side pieces and the main part of the guard (3 piece  guard). It's not as good looking a guard, but if it does the job, I'm not really all that bothered!

Cheers

Ben

[SteveG]

QT guards shouldn't need bending or cutting at all. Just used mole grips to hold in palce while putting bolt through, otherwise no problems.

Cheers

Steve