Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeless Diamond
I may have this problem, although I did swap the outer retainer to the inner position. Grease (sharpie) test had the seal riding dead center of the retainer surface, so I have confidence on that. What does worry me is the service records (PO had all the work done at Seattle Toyota) show that that seal was replaced twice by the dealer. Don't remember if they changed the bearing though so they may have just pulled the axle and slapped a seal in and called it good. It could make sense that the retainer was off, but I swapped to the outer one and made sure it was located correctly.
Anyone know what the actual OD of the retainer should be?
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Reusing the outer retainer at the inner position ends up not the greatest idea. The surface the seal would ride on is perfect but the inner diameter that mates up with the axle shaft isn't. I've confirmed this by taking off the inner retainers on two different vehicles, my 98 and my buddy Wei's 96 because we both also had gear oil getting past and we know the seal to retainer mating was good. It ends up that some damage occurs to the retainer inner diameter during the removal process. It's obvious to me now that the retainer metal is much softer than the axle shaft and slight gouging or grooves are left in the metal when you remove it. If you reuse the retainer, this might give a pathway for gear oil to flow between the retainer and axle shaft. I think this is probably the reason you're having some leaking as well. The leaking we both had wasn't significant because we both had a decent amount of miles traveled after the repair (I put 17k on my rig after the repair) but the leaking over the long term allowed gear oil to contaminate and wash out some of the grease from the bearing which isn't ideal. We put on new inner retainers and cleaned out and repacked the bearings with grease. So far, it looks like that stopped the leak on both of our rigs.
Another possibility is the seal to axle housing mating. Somebody reported even though they used all new parts and confirmed a good mating of the seal and retainer with a sharpie test, they were still getting a leak. It ended up for this person that the fix was installing a new seal with a little RTV between the seal and axle housing. This would definitely be prudent to do if the repair was done before by someone else and they were careless with a hooked style seal puller and gouged the axle housing.
So, something I didn't consider as well as others is it's not just the seal to inner retainer mating that determines a successful axle seal job but you also have to consider the metal to metal mating of the inner retainer to the axle shaft and the metal to metal mating of the seal to the axle housing.
I feel bad that I gave money saving advice for this job that ended up not being the greatest. I have updated both our rear axle seal videos to let people know they can safely reuse the ABS tone rings and retainers at the outer positions to save money but they should definitely use a NEW retainer at the inner position.