D1 swivel balls: seals?

[Blatant]

Subject: New-to-me 96 D1 that I'm rebuilding as a bit of a project/eventual daily driver. Had a persistent ticking in the front passenger hub. I disassembled and found a destroyed spindle bearing. Oddly, when I pulled the spindle and the CV assembly, the swivel was full of a murky mixture of gear oil and grease. The CV socket itself has nasty.

While waiting for parts, I broke down the other side to inspect it. Internals are OK, but that swivel ball held straight gear oil.

I searched and found some topics of interest.

There doesn't appear to be an inner axle seal inboard of the swivels of the type I'm used to. Each inner shaft, though, has a shoulder that I assume sits where the small seal is.

My question: What prevents gear oil from entering the swivel area?

I prefer to run grease and I liberally coated the CVs and swivels with the same synth grease I used on the chromo Birfields in my Toyota. I suppose gear oil mixing in wouldn't be the end of the world, but I was just curious ... and had time to type a book!
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[LRNationals]

its suspose to have gear lube in there. its not leaking into the balls, but now they have switched over to a grease, this is to stop the oil from leaking out! so good luck with the rebuild.....

 

[ptschram]

My question: What prevents gear oil from entering the swivel area?

I prefer to run grease and I liberally coated the CVs and swivels with the same synth grease I used on the chromo Birfields in my Toyota. I suppose gear oil mixing in wouldn't be the end of the world, but I was just curious ... and had time to type a book!
d

About 60% of the trucks I find the inner seal has failed and the oils commingled. Old Series trucks have commingled lubes. Those who convert to the AEU 2522 CVs remove the sleeves, etc so that the oils will commingle.

I have seen a few trucks have the CV joints fail because the owner was under the mistaken opinion that they would never have to worry about it when they switched to grease. Those who have the oil and check can get more than 200K miles on their original CV joints (folks like me )

I only refill with 90 wt and tell all of my clients why. So far, it hasn't cost me any jobs.

 

[Blatant]

By that logic, then, the 90 weight I refill the diff with will commingle with the grease to no ill effect?
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[peter sherman]

This came from D90 source! I am not the auther!
The advantage of lubricating your wheel bearings with gear oil is more than just a convenience. Gear oil is a better lubricant for this application, wheel bearings will run cooler as a result of less friction (and the gear oil provides some cooling capacity) and hence will last longer. The disadvantage of this arrangement is you have a greater possibility of leaks. Land Rover installed axle case seals in the rear primarily because of warranty issues in the North America market. Here where Rovers are marketed as "up market" vehicles and the minimum price for one is $40,000+, Rover found that these folks don't want drips on their driveways and garages - period!

In Australia where vehicle durability seems to be of a greater concern, removing the rear axle case seals is standard procedure. On the front another thing done is to remove the front axle case seal, the inner swivel housing seal and the outer hub seal so that literally gear oil can flow from one set of wheel bearings to the other passing through both swivel assemblies and the diff on the way. To accomplish this effectively you need to overfill the diff by jacking the vehicle up in the front. Unlike engines and transmissions you don't create any problems overfilling diffs (within reason!). The other critically important thing you need to do when you are eliminating axle case seals is to upgrade inner hub seals. Before Rover eliminated axle case seals they had either single or double lip hub seals. When they went to grease in the wheel bearings they down graded the hub seals because it is very easy to seal in wheel bearing grease - it doesn't go anywhere because it doesn't flow! The big problem with this arrangement is that these down graded seals don't seal some things from coming in such as water! In my opinion whether you eliminate the axle case seals or not you should upgrade the inner hub seals to prevent the ingress of nasties into your wheel bearings.

On a related subject - swivel housing grease vs gear oil, I haven't seen a debate in a while on this list about it. Similar to the axle case seal issue it was introduced as a solution to a warranty problem - leaky swivel seals and American driveways and garages, but it was actually an improvement, swivel housing grease is moly-disulfide and you can't get a much better lubricant for this application. If you don't want to eliminate the axle case seal but want better wheel bearing lubrication, eliminate the inner swivel housing and outer hub seal and run your wheel bearings in moly-disulphide. Again it is extremely important to upgrade the inner hub seal when doing this.

Bill
Great Basin Rovers

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[96discoI]

About 60% of the trucks I find the inner seal has failed and the oils commingled. Old Series trucks have commingled lubes. Those who convert to the AEU 2522 CVs remove the sleeves, etc so that the oils will commingle.

I have seen a few trucks have the CV joints fail because the owner was under the mistaken opinion that they would never have to worry about it when they switched to grease. Those who have the oil and check can get more than 200K miles on their original CV joints (folks like me )

I only refill with 90 wt and tell all of my clients why. So far, it hasn't cost me any jobs.

you sound like you are one of the voices to listen to- what is your opinion on using a 140 weight for the same thing?