I had a few hours to spare so thought I'd have a go at changing the half shaft seal. This was drivers side rear wheel. You need to take off the wheel and brake caliper. To get to the half shaft you have to take off the diff cover, remove a pin from the center of the diff, slide in the half shaft, remove the c-clip, then slide the shaft all the way out, and you get to the seal.
Taking care to remove the seal without touching the bearings I found a tool that seems to just pop in and give good leverage on the seal to pop it out.
Used a wooden block and hammer to tap in the new seal and keeping it square.
Now onto the next problem I encountered. Look at the lines carved into the center of the diff. This was from when the pinion came loose. This has since been tightened up. I was up at Gatwick when it came loose, and nursed it home. It was grinding/rumbling from the back end. There was a lot of metallic fragments on the magnet on the diff cover. This made it difficult to get the pin out of the middle of the diff as the grind marks went over it. I call it a pin, but its like a half inch thick bar. Also noticed the ring gear was loose. It has 10 bolts. Every one was loose, probably caused by the vibration of the pinion being loose, forcing the ring gear in places it shouldn't go. Tried to tighten up the bold, but that had no threads, again the vibration was wearing the bolts down. Luckily the thread in the ring gear was okay, this is far tougher metal. I had some bolt from when i swapped the gears, so I popped in 10 new ish bolts, with loctite and done them up very tight.
Not driven the car yet, as it took me about 4 hours to do all that in the end. Getting up from under the car to fetch tools, or to spin the wheel a bit and put the handbrake back on so I could tighten up the next nut on the ring gear. It all took time. It was like a work out up the gym. I feel like I've done 100 sit ups. lol
Taking care to remove the seal without touching the bearings I found a tool that seems to just pop in and give good leverage on the seal to pop it out.
Used a wooden block and hammer to tap in the new seal and keeping it square.
Now onto the next problem I encountered. Look at the lines carved into the center of the diff. This was from when the pinion came loose. This has since been tightened up. I was up at Gatwick when it came loose, and nursed it home. It was grinding/rumbling from the back end. There was a lot of metallic fragments on the magnet on the diff cover. This made it difficult to get the pin out of the middle of the diff as the grind marks went over it. I call it a pin, but its like a half inch thick bar. Also noticed the ring gear was loose. It has 10 bolts. Every one was loose, probably caused by the vibration of the pinion being loose, forcing the ring gear in places it shouldn't go. Tried to tighten up the bold, but that had no threads, again the vibration was wearing the bolts down. Luckily the thread in the ring gear was okay, this is far tougher metal. I had some bolt from when i swapped the gears, so I popped in 10 new ish bolts, with loctite and done them up very tight.
Not driven the car yet, as it took me about 4 hours to do all that in the end. Getting up from under the car to fetch tools, or to spin the wheel a bit and put the handbrake back on so I could tighten up the next nut on the ring gear. It all took time. It was like a work out up the gym. I feel like I've done 100 sit ups. lol
eace:
