Discovery Shock Absorbers Turret - snapped bolt...

Mmmmm I would be careful, three will affect the suspension geometry. Drive it carefully and no off road.

I would personally replace all the bolts with Stainless Steel ones.

A

You can't, the four "bolts" are captive on a ring that is trapped by the spring, you have to do all four by replacing the ring. Next time use a torque wrench.

Peter.

On or around Sun, 9 Jan 2005 23:28:15 -0000, "Peter Seddon" enlightened us thusly:

There're only 3 on mine at the moment on one side. The other side has 2 on the inner side and is welded on the outside. But then they're David "Llama" ones with open sides, so they don't have to come off to change the dampers.

Mine sheared on removal, BTW. If I could've got spare rings and bolts I'd have replaced 'em, but that wasn't an option on the day.

BTW, the 3 bolts on the one will NOT affect geometry. The only thing that can happen is that *if* the 3 bolts were to shear the damper would stop working, doubtless with much clunking and banging. The only thing that turret does is locate the top of the damper. The axle is located by the radius arms and the panhard rod, and the turret breaking loose (not likely) will not affect that or the spring.

steel tends to have tensile strengh something around 16tons/sq inch. those bolts are 5/16" UNF, and thus will have a root CSA of something around

1/16sq.in., and thus 3 of them will need a force of 3 tons to break 'em. The only way I can see you'd get that is if the bump stop on the chassis is missing (I notice one of mine is, must get it replaced) and for the damper to top out hard in off-roading, say. The damper shouldn;t be able to top out with the axle bump stop (rubber block on the chassis) in place, that's what it's there for.

I can't see normal damping forces getting that high.

It's safe in as much as your axle isn't going to fall off.... if the rest of the bolts shear though the shock absorber at that side won't do a lot.

The problem with running 3 bolts is that the turret is prone to twisting sideways and after a time it will either stress and snap the other bolts or the turret itself will crack.

IMV it's crazy to "bodge" this kind of thing, the bolts are captive - mounted into a ring that is clamped between the spring and the top mount. Replacement rings cost a few quid each and, even starting from scratch, it'll take an hour at most to fit a new one... (you need to either remove the spring or at least open up enough of a gap between the spring and the mount to drop the old ring out and put the new one in.

cheers

Dave W.

On or around Mon, 10 Jan 2005 10:02:26 +0000 (UTC), Dave White enlightened us thusly:

fair comment, but sometimes it's not practical to replace the ring with bolts, as in my case, when I needed the thing fixed rapidly for the MOT and new rings/bolts were not readily to hand.

Apart from the fact that it should in an ideal world have the full complement of bolts, I don't see how it would twist with 3 bolts fitted, since 2 of them are opposite eachother. It could equally well be fitted with 2 larger bolts, diametrically opposite, I reckon. The forces on it basically act straight up and down.

three will affect the suspension geometry.

Pray, how?

It is possible to use a bolt to repair the ring but it'll have to come off for that. It's so easy to do that trying alternatives is just not worth the effort.

The problem is that the lip of the turret is only fairly thin anyway, depriving it of 25 percent of it's load bearing area is liable to find any weaknesses. I had a turret fail on a challenge event, in your neck of the woods as it happens, a few years ago - The failure started with a crack around one of the bolts (the inside one). Once it lost the support of that bolt a stress fracture developed until after half a days hard competition the turret failed completely. Obviously the fact the first crack appeared showed that the turret was on it's last legs anyway but the speed that the cracks accelerated once the first bolt was "bypassed" was amazing.

Part of the problem may have been that the suspension geometry of a Land Rover means that the axle moves further left as it moves upwards so the angle of the shock absorber (and in turn the direction forces act in) moves from side to side slightly and also back and forth. Obviously long travel suspension doesn't help the situation !

Needless to say that that was the last competition I did with standard LR turrets :-)

cheers

Dave W.

If you get a crack, in the turret or anywhere else for that matter, drilling a small hole at the end(s) of the crack will help a great deal in preventing it gowing - obviously this could be tricky on a windscreen!

Cheers Richard