The steering relay, although feeling pretty smooth, had leaked all its oil, and was looking pretty dry and cruddy. On opening it up, it appears the previous owner had replaced the gear oil with grease, and (thus) not bothered to replace the oil seals. I ordered a couple new ones, and proceeded to prepare everything for overhaul. As this was the first item I was actually refurbishing, excitement levels were pretty high!
The workshop manual (and countless YouTube videos!) insists you need a Land Rover special tool to be able to compress the large internal spring of the relay whilst inserting the two split bushes, and avoiding having a limb removed when said spring explodes and showers bits of relay bushes across the workshop! Not having such a rare (and no doubt, expensive) Land Rover tool required some creativity to make a homemade version of it (see Exhibit A below).
The tool did indeed make it fairly easy, and the relay was overhauled in short time (and no limbs were lost in the recording of this post!). A check of the final tension showed it to be within spec, so after a quick spray of the casing, the relay could be reinstalled in the chassis. The new galvanising inside the chassis relay opening did require some “gentle“ filing and sanding, and after much “persuasion“, the relay was back in its housing.