Rear Wheel Hub Seals ................ Nothing Against India But ......

[rfs1957]

Anyone else had problems with these ?



Flushed with joy at fitting new bearings, I came to fit the seals.



And found them impossible to fit ; insufficient lead perhaps ? or the housing is designed for steel-backed original seals and the entry edge is too sharp ?

Either way there is no way these will fit.

They twist, get jammed, deform, and then get panned with a hammer in frustration ; it's too hot for this.

SNGB list steel-backed for the inner seal, but not for the outer.

Au secours.

[Gfhug]

Au secours.

Nurse, vite, un bouteille de vin rouge pour M Simpson

[rfs1957]

apparently a well known fact amongst the brighter professionals (Angus) that you have to grind the OD of these to get them to fit.

Grinding seals.

Is that what maintaining an E Type has been reduced to??

[mgcjag]

Your only grinding the outside edge.....most of the old seals iv removed from rear hubs/diffs have obviously never been a perfect fit as the outside edge has always been splayed up from banging them in......were they ever a perfect fit.....iv always trimmed down the outer edge to fit replacements......Steve

[rfs1957]

[Gfhug]

Cheers, Geoff

[rkellogg19]

I found the easiest way was to use a press to get them to go in evenly and without any grinding off the outside.

[angelw]

Rob Wrote:

I found the easiest way was to use a press to get them to go in evenly and without any grinding off the outside.

My experience also and we do this job often. The seal is sourced through a local bearing supply business; when I get a chance, I'll look up the part number and Post it here.

Regards,

Bill

[rfs1957]

Happy to take the rubber skin off the outside, if that's what’s required, as we’re in a dust-seal and grease-seal context, not a true oil- seal environment.

Just a right PITA as now have to order two more - it beggars belief that suppliers can’t be arsed to give buyers a heads-up on issues like this when one of the advantages of web-based parts selling is the ease with which info and advice relating to a specific part can be annexed to a part reference.

(Ed - Like warning buyers that the thousands of half-shaft bolts you’ve been selling for TEN years are actually STILL being supplied nearly four thou undersized …………. )

Best practice I’ve come across in this respect has to be Minispares.com

[Philippe-J.]

More than 2 years later, it's my turn to consider replacing those seals. Being a 4L2, the reference is C24789 and not C19068. Anyway I was amazed to see that this reference can be bought for 6E or so, or ... for ten times more
I understand that these seals are key for hub long term behavior, but would you say the high price quality is worth it?
Same remark & question for the inner hub oil seal C15231, in a lesser extent though.

[mgcjag]

Interesting.. ..in a close up look at Rorys Aluminium Hub it has 78 JAG stamped on it....is this a later xj6 hub..these use different seals to the ones Rory had problems with...I dont know the differences..is it outside diameter?
....anyway i iv used the cheaper seals before as mentioned above and its not untypical to have to just file in a lead edge to fit them....this is typical with many of the "plastic coated" seals.....Steve

[angelw]

Hello Rory,
The number of the seal that fits without mutilating it is TC12234. It's rubber coated and the coating doesn't have to be removed to get it to fit. I've fitted 100s of these seals without any issues.

The machined bores in the aluminum housing that takes the bearings and seals, would have been machined on some type of milling machine, or special purpose machine, using individual boring bars, or a special tool carrying multiple cutting inserts to finish all bores in one application. Although cutting edges could be arranged on a gang insert tool to debur the sharp corners between faces and bores, clearly no thought was put into deburing the bores and hence, there are quite sharp corners on the bores of the Hub Carrier. With some machines of today, finishing all of the internal detail of the Hub Carrier, including small debur radii on all corners, could be done with the one boring bar, with the profile being Interpolation Turned as if with a lathe, but with a stationary workpiece as shown in the following video.

https://www.google.com/search?q=interpo ... V32QA,st:0

These sharp corners are not much of an issue when installing a metal housing seal and given that the original seal has a metal housing with no rubber coating, is the probable reason why not much effort was put into deburing these sharp corners. These sharp corners could make it difficult to fit even a perfectly sized rubber coated seal;accordingly, before attempting to install the seal, I break the sharp corner between face and bore with a hand deburing tool, which is a circa 5 second job.

Regards,

Bill