ONE of my customers has a very nice old Series III 109-inch Station Wagon, fitted with a roof tent and used for exploring some of the wilder and more beautiful parts of Britain. Back in July 2021 it came into the workshop for attention to a leaking front swivel seal. The chromed swivel ball was badly pitted with rust, so a new seal would not have lasted long. The sensible thing to do was to change the swivel ball, which is what I did.
Swivel balls have been a feature of Land Rovers since the first Series I in 1948. The front axle designed by Rover closely followed that of the wartime Willys Jeep, the main difference being that the swivel balls on Land Rover’s axle bolted to the axle tube with a six-bolt flange rather than being welded to the tube, so that the swivels could be replaced without having to change the entire axle. The same basic design was carried over to the 1970 Range Rover, which in turn spawned the coil-sprung 90/110 family and the first generation Discovery. The Salisbury front axles fitted to the Series III One Ton, 101 Forward Control and a small number of One Tens had welded-on swivels, presumably for strength.
The original swivel balls have very good, hard chrome plating and typically last a very long time. Military Series vehicles were usually fitted with leather gaiters to protect the swivel balls and stop sand and grit getting into the seal between the ball and housing. These seem to have worked well provided they remained undamaged, but I have seen a couple of vehicles where a split gaiter had trapped a large quantity of abrasive material against the swivel ball
