Free wheeling hubs: 5 months later lesson learnt.

In November 2023 I fitted a pair of free wheeling hubs to my Gen3 - there were a number of reasons fopr this covered in the small post I did at the time. Still believe it was the correct decision. 

I had no fitting instructions, in particular nothing relating to torquing the attachment bolts fitting the unit to the wheel hubs, or for the 10mm bolts holding the front plate with the selector unit. So I tightened them in the standard sequence until everything felt solidly tight. 

Over the past 5 months I have done under 1000 km in the vehicle as I have had a pretty hefty travel schedule keeping me from having fun. 

Fast forward to yesterday when I revisited both my piloting & army days and did a short trip to the Shuttleworth collection, got super nostalgic seeing the C47s and then came home - round trip around 200km. This morning I decided to grease the propshafts and when returning from a short post-greasing run, on unlocking the front hubs saw that one of the holding bolts was almost completely out. In order to tighten these bolts, I have to remove the front plate of the unit (I dont have any elbow tools to tighten the bolts). and this lead to the second discovery : each hub had lost a 10mm front plate holding bolt. 

I found all the bolts to be loose, on both back plate attachment to the wheel hub and on the front plate holding the selector,  ranging from finger tight to absoltely loose. 

I have tightened them all (in the process I believe I have have started stripping one of the front 10mm bolts, beware of this), and have ordered a set of 10mm bolts to replace those that have fallen out.

The big lesson here is to revisit these hubs after fitting and check the holding bolts..

Basic engineering tells me that they would settle in and would require tightening, but I have never got around to checking them. I should have done this after the first month of driving. In the military we called this First Parading a vehicle before driving it, always a pain to do, but now all these years later, I realise I should have done this. 

Lesson learnt - I just wanted to share this with the guys fitting these hubs!

 

Your Jimny has greasable propshafts? The only nipple I've ever found is on the front slip joint.

​​​​​​Manual hubs are fit-and-forget solution, so I've heard.

Bad description. I greased the universal joints attached to the propshaft ends.

Manual hubs are indeed Fit and Forget. The front plate attachment bolts have serrated flangs, so I expected them to stay locked when tightened. The main attachment bolts have no washer or serrations. They have all come loose with the vibration of the front wheels. I have very slight death wobble passing through 50mph, nothing serious but I feel it.

Yup, no grease nipples on the UJs on any of the 6 Jimnys I've had! I guess your UJs must have been replaced at some point?

The standard joints don't have a grease nipple.

The propshaft joints are 25x63.8mm, and mainly fit Mitsubishi.

Quinton Hazel (remember them?) Listed 2 in that size

QL219 standard, and QL519 which has a grease nipple.
The 519 fits the front propshaft on a Pajero/Shogun/L200.

The 219 fits Most RWD Mitsubishi and the Suzuki SJs (and presumably the Jimny).

Most of us use the Blueprint ADK83901 nowadays, which has no nipple, I'd imagine you can still get the one for the L200, but I don't know a part number.