jimbob1111

I installed a Dana 71 in a 90 Air Force tug. The D71 was from up north & very rusty. I installed wear sleeves, wheel seals, checked bearings, replaced brake shoes, wheel cylinders & lines.
Just used the tug for small stuff around the yard for several years & no real issues. It's always parked on a cement driveway and never had any leaks at all.
A couple months ago I busted the input shaft on my 96 2500 diesel, so i started driving the tug 35 miles one way to work on the NE side of Atl. After 3 days i pull in the driveway & smell gear oil. Left side wet, right side dripping. I work 4-10 or 4-12s a week on night shift, all highway to & from work. I'm going the opposite of rush hour traffic. It's gonna have to make it to the weekend.
Tear it down, found right parking adj cable busted & seal all chewed up! I figured end of busted cable must have gotten into seal somehow? Never seen that before in over 20 years of working on driveline stuff!
I installed a new National oil seal on the right side, cleaned everything up and reassembled. Didn't mess with the left side. Drove it around over the weekend & all looked good. Drove it to work 2 days on the highway, gear oil leaking again on right side. I read through bunches of stuff on the 1st Gen Forums here before I messed with it. I was really surprised by all the different seal leak threads. I just wanted to look at some opinions on seals.

jerseybud

usually the clogged vent has something to do with repeat leaks, but sometimes its the grooves in the spindle/trashed spindles/loose wheel bearings.

I've had horrible luck with national seals. its to the point I will order timken seals for most stuff, or try to track down dana spicer seals regardless of cost.

jimbob1111

Vent was good the hole time it's fixed, I figured other on here might like to see what the problem was? It is seals.
Tear down the right side the next weekend, same thing! The right wheel seal is all chewed up! Over half of the DUSTLIP is missing, I found it inside the bearing area. I'm thinking there might be something to all these wheel seal leak threads? So I decided to install the new National seal i have sitting here for the left side since it just stays slightly wet & the right side is pouring!
I found it strange that it was dry for years then a couple days of highway driving & it starts pouring. I started doing some research to figure out what is doing on.
Reassembled with the new seal, same story. Right side started pouring after a couple days of highway driving again. At this point i just hose down the right side with a bunch of brake cleaner ever couple days.
I started looking at the cross section of seals just to see the difference. I ran across this cross section of a seal specifically for Dana 60HD & 71 and quickly saw the difference!
I ordered a bunch of seals with the correct ID & OD to fit the hub from Rock Auto to find one that was as close to the original D60HD & 71 as possible.
Here's the D71, 60HD i cant seem to get more than 1 pic to upload?

jimbob1111

Here's what pretty much every seal had for a design.
A DUSTLIP!!!
Of course the 2nd National seal started leaking just like the others.
When the big box of new seals arrived i tore it back down the following weekend. The 2nd National seal was all tore up just luke the other 2 previous seals.

jimbob1111

Here's my different seals

jimbob1111

3 out of 4 of the new seals were gonna fail.
I've done a fair bit of trans & driveline work in my life. I went to test fit the Timken seal with a real beast of a dustlip on it on the bare spindle. Ain't no way to put it on without damage except using a feeler gauge or a pick! The id of the dust lip was smaller than the seal lip behind it. I would have had to use a pick or trans seal tool to work the lip around & onto the spindle just to put the seal on the bare spindle with no drum involved! Same with the National & the "IMPOSTER" seal that was in the mix of seals!
The SKF seal had virtually no dustlip, it simply slides right onto the spindle & has slight drag when ya spin it, just like it should!
I had installed wear sleeves at the time of the 1st seals, so that adds a little to the OD of my spindles. I spent a reasonable amount of time blending & smoothing the leading edge of them at the install just to avoid problems.
Each time my seals failed, the dustlip had been folded over & cut off or partially cut off. Then stuck under the sealing lip & when driven destroyed the seal lip!

jimbob1111

I can only guess the reason why the original D71, 60HD seals didn't have a dust lip is because it can't make the transition from the bearing surface to the sealing surface?

jimbob1111

I got lucky, the dust lip was way smaller that the cross section pic showed!

jimbob1111

I believe this would have also corrected my leak if i would have had quick access to them. These were gonna be my last resort since i had already installed wear sleeves.

jimbob1111

When i got around to fixing the left rear wheel seal that was seeping, i found the cut off piece of the dust lip from years ago had successfully worked it's way past the seal lip inside to the wheel bearing area.
If i had to use wheel seals with a dust lip, i would carefully trim off the dust lip with a exacto knife before installing it in the hub.
I have over 600 highway miles with no leaks.

shackwrrr

I ran the oil bath seals as my seal surfaces were pitted up. Going on 3 weeks now with no leaks. Oil bath seals run 25 bucks a piece at advance auto.

Alec

I can't tell for sure from the picture of your spindle, but I suspect your problem is that you did not grind the speedi-sleeve edge back enough after you installed it. The sleeves are a tiny bit too wide for this application, so they leave a sharp knife edge hanging over the chamfer that is supposed to help the seal expand over its sealing surface. I used a die grinder with a stone to cut that edge back and restore the chamfer when I installed sleeves on my axle. This solved the problem of cut dust lips. I also do a few little "pull-backs" after I feel the dust lip get started on the sealing surface to try to make sure that the lips are all happy and not rolled.

As for the cost of the "oil bath" seals, if you go to a big on-line retailer, you can get the Timken 370150A seal for under $12 delivered.

jimbob1111

I trimmed & blended the wear sleeves when i installed them years ago. I mentioned that earlier. The sleeves i got were over 1/4" too long for my application. Not cutting & blending them to the spindle was NOT a option! The reason I didn't go straight for oil bath seals is, I already had the wear sleeves on there for several years with no leaks. I figured oil bath seals might not go over the wear sleeves since that has already increased the size of the sealing surface?
I bought the seals at rockauto on closeout for 71 cents each! I had less than $20 in the 3 different types of seals, 10 SKB, 1 Timken & 2 National seals. 4 of the SKB seal boxes had a odd no-name seal in the box?
People that don't have wear sleeves installed could go right for the oil bath sesls to be safe.
When i pull a hub off of late model Super Duty diffs that have oil bath seals, it leaves the inside half on the spindle. I have always replaced the seal after that.

I just thought folks might find it interesting that a seal specifically for a D71 diff shows no dust lip.

jimbob1111

Here's a bigger picture of my spindle