Amnon,
>Anyway. The only thing I can think of is that we used an
>inner seal which was not sealed or wrapped in anything, and
>maybe was dry.
>
>Anybody has any words of wisdom here for me?
Based one what you said it certainly seems that gear oil from the diff is
getting past the inner seal and getting mixed up with the grease in the
knuckle housing to the point where it gets thin enough that it starts
leaking out of some hole somewhere. So there are really two issues, why is
the oil going past the seal, and where is it leaking out.
As to the first issue. As I recall you did remove the seal retainer and
replaced it along with a new seal and I recall that you used some sealer on
it as well, correct? From this one could assume that the seal should be
working unless it is or was defective or unless that seal retainer is
perhaps leaking. But one thing comes to mind, any seal will only seal when
the shaft is running in the center. Did you check the vertical play of the
knuckle housing? The king pin, which is permanent on the axle housing, does
wear into into the lower king pin bearing cap plate by design, it WILL
happen. As such, as this wear continues, the axle shaft runs further and
further off center and in fact it just so happens that as this wear
continues, the axle shaft will effectively lift up which would expose the
lowest part of the seal to an open condition. If all the above is ok then
maybe you need to look at the seal surface on the axle shaft. One thing
that is done sometimes is to use two seals or place the seal in a different
position, unfortunately neither of these can be readily done with this truck
unless you were to make or have made some custom seal retainers that had a
longer bore for the seal to press into. You can also try to correct the
shaft itself. There are two options, well three if you count buying a new
shaft, one is to press on a Speedy-Sleeve or similar product, available from
any bearing company, or have the seal wear area hard chromed (not decorative
chrome) and re-ground. The later is my prefered method, can be very
expensive, but the hard chrome they put down will out last the parent metal
by a factor of 10 or more. Just as an example, I had a companion flange seal
surface done, something like about 1-3/8 dia x 3/4"L, cost was $75 to grind,
chrome, and re-grind
As to where the oil is comming out? Could come thru the kingpin bearing cap
bolts, you do have all 4 in place? Perhaps pull them out and reinstall with
some #2 permatex on the threads. Another option is that the boot is
leaking, perhaps the bands (one of both) are not tight enough. Is there
something deformed on the spindle to knucke mating surfaces? If the brakes
are dry then there really are not to many options. Can you study the thing
to see any signs of where the drips are originating?
Good luck, sounds like your going to need it.
je
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 07 2001 - 00:37:00 PST