1st October 2012 - Hub seals

During yet another run to dump more garden rubbish down the tip I spotted a oil trace on the inside of the OS rear tyre. Also a small one on NS rear.A quick finger test showed this to be EP90...or at least a blend of that and axle grease.

I stripped the hub down (then remembered I had not stripped a hub seal for nearly 10 years!) and the hub seal was showing signs of weeping around the distance piece/seal land. The land had some surface corrosion.

Casting my mind back to 2008-9 when this axle was 'overhauled' I only checked over the seal arrangement and it all seemed good..at the time. So to save peanuts I left it 'as is'. Maybe that was a mistake and a few years aging had finished it off, who knows? So the assembly was stripped down and everything cleaned up in kero ready for a parts delivery from Paddocks.

The distance piece was removed in my std fashion of drilling the surface with a pilot drill and opening the hole up to 8mm - followed by a good hard wack with a cold chisel. Works every time ;)

The mistake I did make was ordering the wrong hub seals. I accidentally clicked on the RTC3511G (S3 >80/81 and Defender) and not the 3510 - muppet! Luckily I had a spare 3510 hanging at the back of the shelf and dropped that in. But the hub seals will always be useful for the 90.

One issue was the internal dia of the new distance piece. This had been stored in the freezer for 4 days prior to fitting (a tad excessive). That should have opened the dia up sufficiently, but it was still too tight. On checking with the vernier the dia's were fine but the axle tube had a small ripple at the end causing a bit of fouling - but good tap using the hub spanner and a 3lb mallet did the trick.

The NS was also stripped and cleaned and the new distance piece fitted. Plus I corrected the odd brake cam adjusters (one cam stripped when I fitted them a while back meaning I only had 3 of one type...so I used the SWB front one). Despite this the hub initially looked to have a better seal than the NS one. Stripping it down showed this to not be the case. It was far worse than the other side. The brake shoes were fine but there was a lot of gunge in there.

I also checked out the weepy OS front hub. The leak turned out to be a couple of loose bolts holding the swivel assembly onto the axle casing. I tightened these up and hopefully all will now be fine?