MattNC
Well-known member
- 222
- 270
- 63
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
Hi All -
I thought I would pass along some lessons learned for doing the geared hub seals. This may be obvious to some of you but the TM's never call it out and the youtube world has multiple ways of attacking this work and all seemed overkill and way longer than needed.
So what I did was combine the input and output replacement seal tasks together. I had a seal leaking from at least one side on each hub and figured I might as well do both since they come in a kit together anyway and the hard part is taking them apart.
So in order after loosening the lugs and jacking it up I took off the half shaft from the differential outputs, a long flat screwdriver is great for stopping the rotation of the shaft when wrenching on it, and then took the wheel off the rest of the way. Drain the hub and you can remove the back cover, front access port for the half shaft, retaining bolt for the half shaft, and remove the half shaft. With the back cover off the hub can now rotate wherever you need it. You can now easily take out the input seal with the hub still on the vehicle using a seal removal tool, and replacing it was done using the jumbo sized hub nut socket as a tool to drive in the new seal. The locking washer tabs are then peened back with a small hammer and screwdriver and the retaining nut comes off and out comes the hub. I used a really long screwdriver to cross the open hub and then wrenched my seal removal tool against it to get the very large output seal removed. I used a deadblow hammer to lightly walk the new seal in.
Everything then goes back together per the TM in a pretty straight forward process. The big advantage to what I laid out here is once you have the back access cover removed you can swing the hub sideways to get to the input seal without either removing the entire hub like some youtube videos show, or by removing the output seal housing like the TM shows, which then requires scraping down and replacing the gaskets which are not included with the kits.
Take or leave the above approach, I just thought I would share what I learned. I also took advantage of the wheels being off to add centramatics, and I have to say I am convinced they make a difference. Its not BMW/Audi smooth, but the shakes and shimmies at different speeds have gone away.
Matt
I thought I would pass along some lessons learned for doing the geared hub seals. This may be obvious to some of you but the TM's never call it out and the youtube world has multiple ways of attacking this work and all seemed overkill and way longer than needed.
So what I did was combine the input and output replacement seal tasks together. I had a seal leaking from at least one side on each hub and figured I might as well do both since they come in a kit together anyway and the hard part is taking them apart.
So in order after loosening the lugs and jacking it up I took off the half shaft from the differential outputs, a long flat screwdriver is great for stopping the rotation of the shaft when wrenching on it, and then took the wheel off the rest of the way. Drain the hub and you can remove the back cover, front access port for the half shaft, retaining bolt for the half shaft, and remove the half shaft. With the back cover off the hub can now rotate wherever you need it. You can now easily take out the input seal with the hub still on the vehicle using a seal removal tool, and replacing it was done using the jumbo sized hub nut socket as a tool to drive in the new seal. The locking washer tabs are then peened back with a small hammer and screwdriver and the retaining nut comes off and out comes the hub. I used a really long screwdriver to cross the open hub and then wrenched my seal removal tool against it to get the very large output seal removed. I used a deadblow hammer to lightly walk the new seal in.
Everything then goes back together per the TM in a pretty straight forward process. The big advantage to what I laid out here is once you have the back access cover removed you can swing the hub sideways to get to the input seal without either removing the entire hub like some youtube videos show, or by removing the output seal housing like the TM shows, which then requires scraping down and replacing the gaskets which are not included with the kits.
Take or leave the above approach, I just thought I would share what I learned. I also took advantage of the wheels being off to add centramatics, and I have to say I am convinced they make a difference. Its not BMW/Audi smooth, but the shakes and shimmies at different speeds have gone away.
Matt
