Learned something about rear axle seal

[steveg]

I'm fixing a leaky rear seal with no evident problem with the bearing. When I ordered the parts from Tom's Import Toys, Tom gave me some tips:

He said he's fixed maybe a hundred of these and the bearing spins, causing heat buildup which fries the seal. He also said if you can pull the bearing carrier off the axle with your hands or hand-push the bearing out of the carrier, it's spinning. The cure is to replace the bearing.

After installing the new seal in the carrier, I heated it in sunlight* for an hour while freezing the bearing. The bearing tapped in easily with a seal driver. Then left the assembly in the sunlight under a glass bowl for another hour and it tapped onto the axle easily. With everything at ambient temperature, nothing budges by hand.

Tom said the take-away is the bearing must be an interference fit in both the carrier and on the axle housing.

*mid-70s today in SoCal.

 

[BigGreen]

Great tip, i will tell my wife I have to take the Healey to the USA ;-)

 

[bob hughes]

Any excuse BigGreen



Bob

 

[steveg]

Followup - today I measured the protrusion of the bearing spacer beyond the face of the bearing carrier at .004". The new Moss gasket had compressed down from .014" to .010" - that leaves the spacer rattling in .006" of extra space. I replaced the Moss gasket with a homemade one at .005" thickness - it should compress down so the bearing spacer is tightly clamped metal-to-metal by the lug nuts as it's supposed to be according to the manual.


This should prevent further bearing spinning.