Rear Hub Axle Oil Seals

[stuzbot]

Righty oh. Finally having vanquished the ABS Sensor From Hell [coming to a cinema near you], I've finally pulled my rear stub axle and got to have a look at the seals. So, what do those of you who've "been there— done that" think of these?

To my untrained eye, the inner oil seal looks fine. There's no obvious deformation or tears to the rubber...

...which is more than I can say for the outer seal. As you can see from the photos, the ridged seam around its centre is running at an angle and looks "rippled" in places. I'm assuming it's not meant to look like that...

Of course, as I've mentioned before, the truck came with a spare inner oil seal when I bought it and so it looked like previous owner intended to replace that. Before starting to tear things down and, in spite of my natural pessimism, I had hoped the dampness round the rear hub might be a leaking wheel cylinder [easy job] but expected it to turn out to be that inner oil seal [medium job]. But it's now looking like it's an outer oil seal [arse of a job].

When taking the nuts off the back of the hub assembly, I found that one of them was pretty rough turning, like it had been cross-threaded before. Also, on that side of the wagon, the brake backing plate has been replaced with a new one. So I'm starting to think that someone took it apart to fit the new backing plate and somehow knackered the outer oil seal, while sticking things back together again. And either they or someone else has seen the leak, bought an inner oil seal to fix it and then done what I've just done; pulled things apart, realised it's the outer oil seal and decided to give up, at that point.

So what think you all?

BTW I do have a hydraulic press. So "in theory" should be able to press the bearing etc off the axle. But "in theory" the ABS Sensor just lifts out after you undo the bolt. So I'm not even going there yet.

 

[felix2566]

Personally while you have it all apart and you have a replacement seal I'd 100% change it. Lip seals can look perfectly ok and still be leaking. Assuming the inner seal isnt that hard to change, doesnt look like it should be.

 

[stuzbot]

Personally while you have it all apart and you have a replacement seal I'd 100% change it.

Yeah. I did think exactly the same. But then I followed it up by musing on the old "If it ain't broke..." adage. I'm pretty sure it's the outer seal that's the culprit. But it could be the inner... or both.

 

[stuzbot]

Well, it looks like I may have been barking up the wrong tree. According to Roughtrax, the outer seal isn't an oil seal at all, but a dust seal...

...and doesn't play any part in keeping oil from oozing into the brake drum...

This is actually good news as it means that [hopefully!] it's just the [also hopefully] much easier inner oil seal that needs replacing. So I shouldn't need to dismantle the hub assembly any further.

 

[BobMurphy]

I would replace the inner seal "while you're in there" - if only for peace of mind !

Bob.

 

[MikeJak]

I'd replace the inner seal as you're there... true, the outer is only a dust shield as far as I know. have you checked that the breather is free and not clogged? it's quite a common cause for the axle building pressure and pushing oil through the seal

 

[stuzbot]

...have you checked that the breather is free and not clogged? it's quite a common cause for the axle building pressure and pushing oil through the seal...

Yes. I replaced the breather last year, hoping it might cure the problem. But since the hub and brakes were already oily, it's hard to tell if this stopped any further leakage. Hence why I'm doing the seal too.

 

[Aeroelastic]

Hi Stuzbot, not sure where you are at this job. Just watched a youtube video from The Car Care Nuts (which some of you would know I supposed as his Toyota knowledge is second to none):

Part of the video is for the inner seal replacement. He didn't remove the abs sensor. If you are doing both sides of your axle seals, might be worth considering leaving the sensor in place but be careful. To save you some hassle.

For other 80s owners, Some of his videos about the 80 series are really details and full of information. But he only focuses on petrol engine as that's what they have in the states.

 

[stuzbot]

I'm just waiting for an oil seal puller to arrive, as I want to try and pull the old seal without wrecking it too much, so I can see what kind of a state it was in. So everything's on hold til the weekend. But the stub axle is out and the ABS Sensor did surrender eventually.

Cheers for the video link. I've not checked out that channel before.