I should have spent this weekend enjoying what has turn out to be "one of the last good weather weekends" we're going to have this latter end of the year. In stead of driving it I chose to work under it, fixing the oil leak from the front end of my diff. That is to change the front oil seal and while I'm at it replace the quill shaft bearing.
I chose the piece meal strip down, rather than the entire rear axle method some prefer, and found that the dismantling process was quite easy. It helps I guess when everything is still clean from my rebuild, but I had never stripped the front end extension off the diff before, or in reality vise-verse. The well supported the diff, slid off and out of the extension rear flange and quill spline, as easy as pealing a banana. Great! Now I've got access to everything I thought the rest would be plain sailing.
Just flip the old seal out and replace I read somewhere; the steel cased leather looking seal I found didn't look like it would cooperate with the flipping idea. One destroyed seal later, evidence of a previous removal method less kind to the housing was discovered, anyway it was out and the new seal was fitted, this one, in the next change can be flipped out, probably.
I read some were else that after removing the front circlip from the extension housing it was just a matter of using the quill shaft to drift the bearing out! Of course you don't use the quill shaft directly, I happened to have a piece of bar that fitted inside the large spine end, and then beat the sh-t out of that and still couldn't get the bearing to budge.
This now posed a problem, I've now had to remove the extension housing from the suspension arms, the one joint I wanted to avoid disturbing. With the car supported at the rear seat heel panel, the rear wheels supported at the height just below their load carrying point and the two diagonal arms supported by a single cross beam of wood on my jack I loosened and removed the four bolts and lifted the housing clear with no drama. I amazed how easy that was.
If everything was as easy as it was supposed to be it would have been a Saturday job, now Sunday's gone and so has Kitty. Lets see how easy the bearing will be to remove tomorrow utilising a press in my works maintenance shop.
By the way my diff was virtually dry! I shouldn't have put the job off for so long, must of been the call of "one of the last good weather weekends" I keep hearing about!
John4D
I chose the piece meal strip down, rather than the entire rear axle method some prefer, and found that the dismantling process was quite easy. It helps I guess when everything is still clean from my rebuild, but I had never stripped the front end extension off the diff before, or in reality vise-verse. The well supported the diff, slid off and out of the extension rear flange and quill spline, as easy as pealing a banana. Great! Now I've got access to everything I thought the rest would be plain sailing.
Just flip the old seal out and replace I read somewhere; the steel cased leather looking seal I found didn't look like it would cooperate with the flipping idea. One destroyed seal later, evidence of a previous removal method less kind to the housing was discovered, anyway it was out and the new seal was fitted, this one, in the next change can be flipped out, probably.
I read some were else that after removing the front circlip from the extension housing it was just a matter of using the quill shaft to drift the bearing out! Of course you don't use the quill shaft directly, I happened to have a piece of bar that fitted inside the large spine end, and then beat the sh-t out of that and still couldn't get the bearing to budge.
This now posed a problem, I've now had to remove the extension housing from the suspension arms, the one joint I wanted to avoid disturbing. With the car supported at the rear seat heel panel, the rear wheels supported at the height just below their load carrying point and the two diagonal arms supported by a single cross beam of wood on my jack I loosened and removed the four bolts and lifted the housing clear with no drama. I amazed how easy that was.
If everything was as easy as it was supposed to be it would have been a Saturday job, now Sunday's gone and so has Kitty. Lets see how easy the bearing will be to remove tomorrow utilising a press in my works maintenance shop.
By the way my diff was virtually dry! I shouldn't have put the job off for so long, must of been the call of "one of the last good weather weekends" I keep hearing about!
John4D
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