Leaky birf - but only on driver side??!!
- Thread starter alia176
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
It's a fun experiment and no damage thus far. However, I know of personally two 97s that have these hubs w/o issues. Don't worry, I won't hurt my ride too bad 
Warn hubs have the internal clearance to accept a .27 shim behind the snap ring.
Ali,
Yeah, my wear pattern was extremely obvious. Around 90,000 miles it had worn so much that there was no question - much of the lip was actually worn off so the seal opening was noticeably oval. My left birf was running in pure Mobil 1 gear oil with literally not a trace of grease in it. Since I'd dutifully continued to pump grease in the square birf plug, there was still enough grease in the knuckle housing to prevent any gear oil from running out the triple seals so I had no clue this was going on. Guess keeping the knuckle full so the triple seal lip edge remained unworn helped as well.
Anyhow, it seems to be working. I'm not sure what I'm going to use as a decision point on when to open it up at this point - maybe 100,000 miles? The Amsoil grease in there is far more capable than this application needs, so I'm confident it's not going to lose its ability to protect the birfield joint as long as it's still in place and the normal triple seal weeping indicates that all is still well.
DougM
Yeah, my wear pattern was extremely obvious. Around 90,000 miles it had worn so much that there was no question - much of the lip was actually worn off so the seal opening was noticeably oval. My left birf was running in pure Mobil 1 gear oil with literally not a trace of grease in it. Since I'd dutifully continued to pump grease in the square birf plug, there was still enough grease in the knuckle housing to prevent any gear oil from running out the triple seals so I had no clue this was going on. Guess keeping the knuckle full so the triple seal lip edge remained unworn helped as well.
Anyhow, it seems to be working. I'm not sure what I'm going to use as a decision point on when to open it up at this point - maybe 100,000 miles? The Amsoil grease in there is far more capable than this application needs, so I'm confident it's not going to lose its ability to protect the birfield joint as long as it's still in place and the normal triple seal weeping indicates that all is still well.
DougM
