viscous damage ??

[philbert]

while getting stuck yesterday i was informed i only had rear wheel drive .drove home with no drama and no expensive noises.have stripped front axle theres no damage.front prop rotation gets a clunk from the transfer box as the slack is taken up.dropped oil from transfer box no bits but oil was black and its only 3 weeks old.is the viscous damaged or am i missing something?

[muddyweb]

Don't think so.

If the halfshafts, diff and prop are all OK, then it pretty much has to be the transfer box :-(

[philbert]

yep the half shafts and diff are really good (better than i thought after 100k of abuse).the prop is fine only leaves the transfer box.looks like it will have to be a new one then.

[Range Rover Blues]

What car is this on?

I don't like the sound of black oil after 3 weeks.  As a rule of thumb the viscous unit (if you have a Borg-Warner transfer box) should provide enough resistance to allow you to tighten or loosen the wheelnuts with one wheel raised, if the wheel spins with little or no resistance then the viscous unit is gone, if it's locked then no amount of pushing will make that wheel turn.  When the car is warm I can just turn one prop slowly by hand, again the torque of the propshaft bolts will make the prop turn if the wheels are raised.

[philbert]

its a borg warner and its fitted to my defender.its certainly not locked up.but there is very little resistance with one front wheel of the ground.oh bum time for a new box then.

thanks  phil

[philbert]

its the viscous coupling. i removed it last night and its dead.the black oil was caused by what ever is in the coupling breaking up and being spread through out the box.