There has always been a bit of a clunk when changing gear which I've been told by the mechanic (who recently did a lot of work on it in the Uk) was nothing to worry about, there is a bit of play in the front prop shaft if you turn it, usual for a disco of this age. However, there now seems to be a metalic rattling and sporadic deep crunching noise, this tends to happen when changing gear but is fine when the car is under drive especially in the higher gears. I thought it might be the UJ's but these seem fine with no play. This occasionally turns into a metal on metal vibration noise which seems to be coming from the centre of the car. The sound seems as though it;s traveling down a propshaft but obviously it's hard to explain a noise from a car on a forum post!

I was just about to head down to Western Sahara when the problems arose. Knowing there was a land rover main dealer in Agadir I turned round and headed there. After a test drive with the mechanic they've double checked the Uj's and taken of the front prop shaft, after moving it a bit with the diff lock on (without front prop shaft) they drained the oil from the gear box and went to lunch. The language barrier is very difficult. They've come back from lunch and decided that it's the transfer box and it needs a new one. they also can't source the part...saying all that however I think they have misdiagnosed the play in the gears for the actual problem. They also removed the spline from the bottom of the shaft and couldn't work out why it didn't go back it, I managed to stop them from hammering it in and vaguely managed to explain that it only goes in one specific way, (they hadn't marked it) I fixed this myself in their workshop using a clamp by trial and error marking it so I knew where i was then turning through each of the splines/rings until it slid in nicley....as you can imagine I'm not exactly filled with confidence...they are a main dealer with a service shop but they only had brand new cars in there and were mostly seeming to change brake pads etc

I'm now having dinner having paid 600dh for them to look at what I already knew and checked through myself. Really at this point I need someone with experience of older rovers and who speaks pretty good english. I can;t really risk heading further south only for the problem to get worse and me further from home. Of course these sounds could just be the play getting a bit worse and in reality nothing to worry to much about assuming I'm very careful changing gear.

At this point I'm really trying to work out my options unless by some stroke of luck someone through here or landy forum comes to my resuce with some help. I gues limping it home in a vain hope it makes it is m best option. Very gutting as I was really hoping to make Senegal.