Land Rover 109 gets a Roamerdrive

   A couple of weeks ago I sold my 93 Range Rover LWB to the parents of a friend. It has moved on to the greater LA area. With the money from the sale I purchased a Roamerdrive (formerly Roverdrive) from Ray Wood at Global Roamer. http://roamerdrive.com/
   This overdrive offers the same basic gear reduction as the Fairey but with updated technology. While the Fairey uses helical cut and straight cut gears the Roamerdrive uses a planetary gear drive such as used in automatic transmissions. It is also used as the final drive at the wheel on the big Caterpillar dump trucks. The other major difference is the Fairey uses 90wt and has it's own separate oil supply while the Roamerdrive uses 75-90 synthetic GL-4 oil which it shares with the Xfer box keeping the od cooler.
   After a bit of fumbling with my bank on the international purchase, Global Roamer is in British Columbia, Canada, my od was shipped and recieved.

   I also got the redesigned Xfer case bottom cover designed to reduce leakage and increase cooling.

   Soon I set about removing the Fairey I had lifted from Ignotus my 88. That took some time but was fairly easy. The mainshaft nut was removed and the roller bearing taken off.

Then the new drive set up was installed with the well thought out tools provided by Global Roamer.

    The nut on the mainshaft gets torqued to 110ftlb so you need to put it in gear and block the engine from turning with the crank handle braced by a jack stand or something.

There is a very good instruction booklet included regarding the installation. I did have 1 final issue with the install. My od lever and the maingearbox lever wanted to occupy the same time space continuim when in 4th and od. An email to Ray and he said it was unusual(more on that later) but just bend it out of the way. So I was back and forth a bit bending and installing checking that it wouldn't interfer with 3rd over. I wound up with 2 bends.

    With the kit came a Xfer case oil dipstick, which you put on prior to the Roamerdrive. This I did. I have the low gear Xfer case with the big intermediate gear shaft. This case has the small oil fill/check port. So I couldn't use the adapter to get the dipstick tube quite out of the way of the speedo cable as it exits the tranny. There is a pretty good bend there. I don't know but perhaps the difference in this case made the interference with the main gearbox. The only other minor issue was with the screw holding the tunnel being too long and interfering with the lever bracket. I installed 2 thick washers to move it about 1/4" out.

     All buttoned up and ready to go!