Cracked R154 housing near cross member mount - opinions

[dish-oh]

Cleaning up some bits and pieces recently and noticed that my JZA70 R154 has a cracked housing near the cross member mount on the side with the studs. It appears to have previously been repaired using JB Weld or similar, which I picked off before taking photos, however there is still a large piece of metal glued on.

Both studs seem strong and seated well. The thread holes on the other side of the mount are 26mm deep, so take away the 5mm of missing material and I should have around 20mm of thread still in there unaffected.

Looking to get some opinions on whether to get it properly welded (professionally - I'm terrible) or just slap a bit more JB Weld in, on and around it. Laziness says the latter, common sense says the former...

In either case would it be more beneficial to remove the large chip glued on there or just reinforce it with weld or JB?

Excuse how dirty it is, I lost motivation after I saw the crack.

Around the two studs in this photo.




Crack runs between the two studs.


Thanks for any opinions.

[Hen]

I would ignore it, or maybe whack some JB weld on there to make it look neater. There are still 6 good bolt holes to use mounting the crossmember. As a comparison W58s have only 4.

[dish-oh]

Yeah, the cross member bracket only has two bolt holes each side, so I can only use a total of 4 out of 6 holes on the housing anyway.

It's going into an X8, so I might be able to use the rear 4 and reverse the cross member or something, just depends on the hole locations under the car.

[big_zop]

Hey Pete,

Those studs would seem to be glued in as both sides should be bolts, so that would probably be how they glued the other piece on if it is indeed cracked all the way through (looks like it is).

I cant get under my car at the moment to see which mounts are used but you may be able to move things around but knowing what you are like, to make this good as new you would be looking at welding it up and then rethread the bolt holes or helicoil them. I actually had to do one of those holes for my transmission so have a kit you can use if you want.

I also had to weld up my W58 from the 1G (bottom of the case, not near any threads or bearing housings) and had no issues there.

[dish-oh]

Yeah the more I looked at it today the more I thought they shouldn't be there as one is a bit further out than the other.

It feels as though it's strong enough to hold, but I wouldn't be confident running polyurethane mounts with it so it looks like I'll be hunting for a decent welder...

Don't worry about getting under your car I'm still miles away from fitting it haha. Thanks for the offer on that kit, might come in handy later depending on how expensive they are.

[Hurricane]

welding it would be idle, thats what i would do, but ive got a TIG
if the studs are glued in with JB Weld then it should hold.
clean the crack area up, and ruff it up with a file or 80 grit sand paper, etc.
that way you can poor some more JB Weld over the crack.
if your running out of room/hight to poor the JB Weld over the crack, V the crack out or drill some small holes in the crack to alow the JB Weld to hold to somthing.

ive Glue a 4x4 gearbox back together with JB weld before after smashing the sandwich plate into bits. it lasted 4 years of farm use untill i scrapped the car.
that stuff really works well.