I had a personal message asking how I finally got on with this venture - so I post the following to effectively close the thread - as with most posts, the story is in the pictures - but a couple of points I thought worthy of note. (For the Administrator, I'm not sure whether this should have been posted under "Technical Articles" - but the thread started in "Garage" - so it sort of closes it...?)
Please note that all of the below has been discussed before many times in some shape or form.
The housings components (bearings and oil seals) assembled easily with minimal effort from the press , sleeves you will recall were machined size for size, following assembly I fitted the radius arms. (There is no alternative in this sequence)
Then came the drive shaft, shims, roll pins, stage which has been discussed at great length on the forum, (with some interesting approaches) - I opted with the following:-
BEFORE I assembled the drive shafts, (they were disassembled to fit new UJ's), I first slid on the spacer to the output shaft of the transaxle, (Note: this spacer also provides the running face for the output shaft oil seals),
WITHOUT the "O Ring" and then slid on the drive shaft yoke. In this manner it was easy to set up the shims required to obtain that "step" required for the roll pin ensuring that the axial load of the drive shaft is transferred to the diff casing. On completion this, (which is quite easy as you are only handling the drive shaft yoke as opposed to the whole rear corner.... which is an awkward bl**dy thing). I removed the shims and kept them to one side.
At this point, I assembled the drive shafts and also made a "stub axle puller/extractor" from one of the original stub axle nuts which had 20% of the threads damaged by being abused with a hammer I would think by PO's ....
From here it's history - I fitted the O Rings to the transaxle drive shafts, applied silicon to the spacer in contact with this O Ring, fitted the shims and assembled - stub axle puller worked great....
There is some effort required to seat the O Ring and spacer and this requires pushing the drive shaft into the transaxle - I found a ratchet strap worked fine - machining down the end of an old screw driver gave me a LONG (you need this) punch for inserting the roll pins. I am working with a 365 box here and the gearbox casing actually makes fitting these pins awkward, (they probably actually fit best from underneath as you would have a clear line of sight with your punch - my chassis is on axle stands so working from underneath was not practical).
Finally, I can vouch for the stub axle puller working well as an extractor as I had fitted the wrong oil seals.....
They have a 35mm ID and
NOT 30mm as per the bearings (TCS) - which is obvious when you look at the stub axle....
Hope the above helps anyone about to embark on this journey.
