Leaky seals

Given the 265,000 km on the Jeep it was not surprising that the differential and transfer case seals were leaking, as evident by the oil and goop on both cases. So, we decided to remove the rear driveshaft, check the U-joints, and replace the rear pinion seal and the rear output shaft seal on the transfer case. Popping out the driveshaft was straight forward. You can see Jonathon wrestling out one of the U-joint caps on the rear U-joint. The front U-joint still looked and felt great so we left it in place. To replace the pinion seal you must first remove the yoke from the rear pinion shaft. Given the 1 1/8" nut holding the yoke was torqured to 200-300 lb/ft, it was quite the exersize in leverage to remove it. No picture, but you can imagine a very large pipe wrench on the yoke with a 3' pipe on the end, with Jason holding it against the frame. Then me with a 3' breaker bar on the nut and my leg pressing against the bar while holding the frame with my hands. But it did come off without much fan fare. Removing the old seals was slightly challenging as it involved chiselling the outside edge inward to provide access for a pair of vise grips to grab and pull it out. Once the seals were changed, including the o-ring on the speedometer pickup (no picture of that but it is the black and white thing with the wire on it next to the output shaft), we simply put the driveshaft back on. Of course that was after reinstalling the yoke and torqueing (sp?) the nut to ~220 lb/ft. You can see the before and after shots, along with the new and "removed" seals.

The pinion seal on the front diff is actually leaking worse, so hopefully we'll replace that next week.