TOPIC:

Glad to hear there was nothing wrong & the shimming might of helped

Is the front output shaft still floppy? Any clues as to why? I'm a bit reluctant to take half the truck apart if "they're all like that"

Mine's floppy too. As long as the bearings were installed on either side of the BC39 Transfer Shaft, I don't really see if anything else can be done. My only guess is since the front output "transfer" shaft is so short it simply does have the stability of the rear output. The supported length of the shaft is much closer to the unsupported length (the part hanging out of the gearbox. A far greater length of the rear output shaft (essentially the mainshaft) is supported vs. the unsupported length. At least the front output is merely along for the ride until its kicked into 4wd.

Without seeing one, I have 2 guesses/suggestions - (1) Is the bearing mounted in a plastic cup, the same sort of thing as the highlift & 1/14 tractor truck gearbox? If so, a solution might be to cement the plastic cup into its housing with red threadlock, same goes if its a ballrace that's a sloppy fit int the gearbox that's causing the flappage. (2) Could it be it's supposed to be like that as Tamiya's cheap way of getting around a poor fit or lack of slack in the short front propshaft? - if you don't know, the original Hilux hasn't got sliding shafts & they got around that by mounting the gearbox on rubber bushes, to allow the whole gearbox assembly to flap about to allow movement of the suspension & short front shaft! (Horrible horrible horrible, disgusting bit of "engineering"!)

Oh, & meant to say,the Highlift has propshaft problems too - despite having the later sliding shafts, there's not enough movement in them for the full stroke of the suspension (Can't remember whether it's front or back) & the shaft 'bottoms out' at full extension or compression of the suspension (Again, can't remember which)

I checked to see what happens at full suspension compression and full steering lock, some of the slack goes, but not all ... I'm concerned about what's happening to the gears on both ends of the shaft, and the gears they run against - all that flopping about can't do any good ... I think I'm going to have to take the truck apart & see what I can do about shimming things up

Found the problem - well, possibly not all of it, but this must be a major cause - I'd left a bearing out

Got it back together, it's less floppy at the gearbox end, but overall it's still very floppy

Jonny wrote:

Found the problem - well, possibly not all of it, but this must be a major cause - I'd left a bearing out

Did you use a new bearing or did you had one leftover after the build?
Otherwise somewhere in youre Bruiser there should be now one bearing to many.

I promised my Willy that I will not start work on the Bruiser till I have stopped fidling with him (or currently 4 of them), but I am very much enjoying the builds you guys are doing.

waterbok wrote:

Did you use a new bearing or did you had one leftover after the build?
...

I think it was one left over ... should have been a bit of a clue really

I'll not be quoting all the references to things being floppy in a certain topic...