Rear axle pinoin oil seal replacement

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SteveG4TRA

SteveG4TRA

Active Member
Posts
210
Hello again.

My next job on my 2003 S2 is to replace the rear axle pinion oil seal. It's weeping and will only get worse, so my friendly MOT man told me

Can't be difficult I thought, just drain the axle, drop the prop shaft, undo the pinion nut and Bobs your Uncle there's the seal. Prize the old one out and pop a new one in. Easy.

I should have known better when I saw the doughnut arrangement between prop and rear axle pinion flange and the inevitable centralising peg. Of course after 16 years of nestling in the pinion housing the centralsiing peg is well rusted in there.

Obviously I don't have an LRT-51-008 tool, so the question is with a poxy 8mm threaded hole in the center of the centralising peg, just how to I persuade the damn thing to come out?
 
Yep, I had this problem too. first off the "poxy 8mm threaded hole" is actually quite strong and will stand you using it to pull it out.
You need to make a puller. I used a big cheap box spanner cut in half, which I placed on the outside edge. I then got together 8mm threaded bar, a selection of nuts and some really thick washers. so i made a locknut (locked two or three nuts together) for the threaded bar, threaded it down through the thick washers (you could use a socket here too) then used individual nuts to wind the peg out.
HOWEVER. Before I got to this stage I had also added copious amounts of penetrating oil, easing fluid etc and tried a slide hammer as, like you, I didn't think the 8mm hole would take it.
If it does go wrong and you do pull the 8mm thread out of the hole, then you could drill it out and then rethread it to suit, then you'd have even bigger purchase on it.
Best of luck.
 
Hi SS
Thanks for the advice, sounds good. I have ordered some high tensile threaded 8mm rod plus new SS 8mm nuts and some penny washers. I have a suitable body to go ovr the centralising peg have cleaned off surface rust around the yoke body and peg and will apply more WD40 and heat before attempting the pull. I dont have a slide hammer so will trust to this method and let you know how it goes.
My thoughts were that this was a bit of a crappy design first of all, but I guess it is quite a normal automotive format.
 
Stevehh said:
Hi SS
Thanks for the advice, sounds good. I have ordered some high tensile threaded 8mm rod plus new SS 8mm nuts and some penny washers. I have a suitable body to go ovr the centralising peg have cleaned off surface rust around the yoke body and peg and will apply more WD40 and heat before attempting the pull. I dont have a slide hammer so will trust to this method and let you know how it goes.
My thoughts were that this was a bit of a crappy design first of all, but I guess it is quite a normal automotive format.
Click to expand...
Good for you, the slide hammer didn't really do much, so don't worry about it. I'd be a bit wary of the heat although generally speaking it is not a bad idea, but then you don't care if you destroy the seal as you are replacing it anyway. Heat gun rather than torch, but heat can make things bind tighter as you heat the middle as well as the outside, unless you balance ice on the peg! I take it you have taken the diff out, or are you doing all this under the truck? I took the diff out.
 
I'm doing it under the vehicle, on my back in the drive. Taking the diff out to do a simple pinion seal sounds a bit drastic to me. I am waitng for some high tensile threaded 8mm bar to arrive, already stripped an old 8mm coach bolt I found under the bench. I'm not holding my breath though, knowing what it was like to get the lower ball joints out of the front diff. So I somehow dont have a lot of faith that this method is going to shift the damn cetralising peg. I am starting to think that LR could have deisgned this a little better.
 
I took my diff off thinking I needed to replace the bearings either side to the half shafts. It really ain't difficult, and you'll find getting the peg out a lot easier. And quicker! The official LR tool is only their variant of the tool I described I think you'll find.
 
Well, the whole lot is out.

I used part of a ball joint breaker kit to make up the centraliser peg extraction tool. A small length of high tensile 8mm rod double nutted right into the peg, tube over the top, a couple of hefty washers and a single nut made up the extractor. The secret is lots of heat to break the Locktite seal whilst gently winding on the tension. You'll know the peg is pulling out as it starts to squeak. Keep the heat on whilst winding it out and it is fairly straight forward.

That leaves the pinion nut, which in my case turned out to be a pinion bolt. I was concerned that the amount of tension needed to undo this bolt would drive the vehicle off the ramps as here is no rear brake, it has a transmission brake, obviously disconnected on the prop shaft. However with a 0.5m breaker bar it literally fell off. Wonder if it was incorrectly tightened?

So, now to reassembly and we'll see how easy it is to tighten the bolt back up to the correct torque which I think is 100nm. It looks like the pinion bolt was Loctited in, but there is no mention of that in the Rave manual regarding this in reassembly.



.
 
Now here's a question.What stops oil coming down the centralising peg 8mm removal hole, into the prop drive hole and onto the drive?
 
iirc, the peg's threaded hole is blind. Interestingly, when I took mine off, it was because there was huge side-to-side play in the pinion. I was expecting to have to change the bearing, so I bought Timken ones and set about doing the job, but, surprise, surprise, I found the nut that I expected to do battle with was not tight at all. It was the looseness of this nut that was causing the problem. So I tightened it up, put it all back together again and no problems since.
Glad you got it out, Pleased to see the thread held as I thought it would, (you had me worried!)
 
The pegs threaded hole was not blind on mine, it is completely through the body of the peg but only threaded to within a few mm of the end.
Obviously I do not know at what torque the pinion bolt was torqued to, but 95ft/lbs was an easy tightening tension with no need to use a flange fixing tool LRT 51 003 on re-assembly, so I am not quite sure why some complain that the pinion bolt is difficult to undo or for that matter do up? Maybe it is the use of a low strength Loctite on the pinion bolt thread which I guess is what also seals the pinion bolt from leaking oil?
Finally I used a bit of Loctite 601 to affix the peg into the body of the flange after tightening the pinion bolt, bolted the Flexi coupling on at 55ft/lbs and topped up the rear axle with EP75-90 after the car was lowered on to level ground.
Job done. Now on to the leaking rear wheel hub seal, which I believe is a simple O ring change
 
Hi, Re your rear oil leak - you might be lucky just replacing the O ring but on the 2 I did I had to change the hub.
Griff
 
Stevehh said:
The pegs threaded hole was not blind on mine, it is completely through the body of the peg but only threaded to within a few mm of the end.
Obviously I do not know at what torque the pinion bolt was torqued to, but 95ft/lbs was an easy tightening tension with no need to use a flange fixing tool LRT 51 003 on re-assembly, so I am not quite sure why some complain that the pinion bolt is difficult to undo or for that matter do up? Maybe it is the use of a low strength Loctite on the pinion bolt thread which I guess is what also seals the pinion bolt from leaking oil?
Finally I used a bit of Loctite 601 to affix the peg into the body of the flange after tightening the pinion bolt, bolted the Flexi coupling on at 55ft/lbs and topped up the rear axle with EP75-90 after the car was lowered on to level ground.
Job done. Now on to the leaking rear wheel hub seal, which I believe is a simple O ring change
Click to expand...
Interesting about the blind/not blind hole, didn't look at it in any detail. I also thought about it a bit and came to the conclusion that the hole in the peg is well above the level of the oil in the diff so it would only get splashes on it and would be unlikely to get past the loctited bolt.
 
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