Sign of a good holiday  Trust the return isn't too grim

Wow that did fly by ? Sounds like you had a great trip

Update on the rear driveshafts, length, diameter and spline of the shaft i have found is all good and the subaru end is perfect however the end that goes into the MGF outer CV spline is rather short so would have to cut a circlip ring into the cv to retain it which is not ideal. I have ordered a differnt shaft for a similar car which has the same spline and off the photo the MGF end's splines look longer at 35mm opposed to the 20mm ones currenty on my  bench. Fingers crossed that eventually sorts the issue of the lack of Rover 100 shafts.

Back in Perth and now sat at the airport awaiting our 20 odd hours of torment. Been a great 4 weeks. The looming prospect of real life is unappealing   (understatement!)

Yep its billet, fairly reasonable pricing given that lumps of ally that big arent cheap plus the complex machining.   Yep there is a counter bore on the outside. I was thinking about the issues of the canley one and wonder if its a common casting with the other one they do with larger bearings (same bearing inside and outside sold under a bearing upgrade hub)

Studs will form their own spline when fitted. Presumably there is a counterbore on the outside for nuts for the disc holding bolts? Seems to be billet from the pics?

Hi Siggy like you I wanted to reduce the unsprung weight, but didn't want to phaff around with hubs etc. So I simply removed the springs.              Works well until you start moving     Roger

Yep the early units used the 4 spider gears and a double splined drive shaft. These are much stronger than the ver 2 which is basically an open diff with the viscous unit. There are a lot of open diffs being sold as vSLD as the ver 2 and open look similar however the bar between the spider gears is different and the extra thin bolted on side plate. The ver 1 is very different looking and closer to the CLSD in appearance. Its all written up on my R160 conversion guide. Brave to take apart a suretrac unit as they are a PITA to reassemble!

Early and late diffs do actually use different sizes crown wheels bolts actually.   Yep in fact I think the R200 have them too. Obviously the R180 units don’t fit in the R160.

So did the AP come in R160 and R180 ?