Hey guys! Chris Fix here and today I'm going to show you how to fix a leaking rear axle by replacing these axle seals in your car truck or SUV and I'm not going to be doing this on just any car. we're going to be working on this small. SUV Driven by Henry from Donut media who's taking a road trip across the country. so Henry started at J Leno's Garage in California and headed towards Rhode Island for a car show and along the way he took his car which was pretty beat up and restored it to hopefully win this car show but with only one day left before the show, there was a big problem.

Chris I Need your help I'm leaking gear oil I've had to fill it up every 100 miles or so because the seals have gone bad on my rear axle. Can you check it out for me? Yeah let's go take a look. So if we take a look underneath this car, Wow! this is in really good shape. They did a great job restoring this thing.

You can easily see at the end of the axle shaft here. look at all that gear oil shooting out on the end of the tire. This is coated in gear oil and if we look closer you can actually see gear oil dripping from the drum brake backing plate and it's all over the inside of the wheel. So it is obvious that we are leaking a lot of gear oil out those seals on the end of the axle on this side and if we take a look over here.

same thing, look at all that gear oil. So we need to replace these seals and in order to replace the axle seals to get this car back on the road and leak free. Here are all the tools and products you're going to need. Now this isn't my normal setup as you might have noticed.

Well, that's because I've been extra busy this year and I finally found my own place. So in that white container, I'm moving all my tools, spare car parts and the Delo Turbo kit over 1,000 M away. That also includes moving my cars which is not as easy as it looks apparently. I have a lot of project cars, some of which you guys have seen before and some that you'll see pretty soon once.

I get settled into the new driveway. So I really meant it when this was not planned I had no tools at all. so I reached out to Craftsman and they sent out all these tools and overnighted them like parts from Japan And it just goes to show you how few tools you actually need to work on your car and do a complex job like this replacing rear axle seals. So here's here's everything you're going to need.

We have an 80 piece socket set and these ratchets in here have 180 teeth which is really good. Then we have our wrench set. We have a torque wrench Hammer we have a plier set seal Po This is going to be our new seal driver. It's just a big socket and then we have our Slide Hammer You can actually rent these at your local part store for free, just have to return it when you're done.

but in this case they sent it out to us so we have it on hand and then we have our axle seals, our differential fluid and some thread. Locker So that's everything you're going to need to get this job done. I'll be sure to link all the tools and products in the description so you can easily find them and with that said, we don't have a lot of time so let's get started. So the first thing we want to do is Chuck off the front wheels so the car doesn't move by accident.

So with the front wheels chucked off now we could go to the back wheels and let's loosen up the lug nuts. So grab your breaker bar and loosen all five of the lug nuts and we're doing this with the car on the ground so the weight of the vehicle prevents the wheels from spinning. But if you have an impact wrench, you could do this with the car in the air. So with that loose, I also loosened the other wheel as well.

Now we can get our Jack and we're going to lift it up from the rear differential. so let's slide this under and I have a piece of cardboard on the jack to prevent the freshly painted rear axle from getting damaged. Now let's lift this up so the tires come off the ground good and then we can slide the jack stands under the car. Then we can lower the Jack down so the axles rest on the jack stands.

and then finally, let's Slide the Jack out from under here. Now you always want to give the car a good shake to make sure it doesn't budge and that feels solid and now we know that it's safe to go on underneath. Let's go drain the differential fluid. Okay, so first let's get the oil mat under the diff and if you don't have one of these, they are great! I Highly recommend them because they really help prevent the driveway from getting stained with oil.

The drain plug is right here, but before we remove that, we want to remove the fill plug first. And to remove this, you use the square end of a 3/8 ratchet and it pushes right in like that and then we can break this loose and loosen it all the way. Now with that removed, we can remove the drain plug. And the reason why we want to remove the fill plug first is because if we remove the drain plug plug and drain the entire system, but the fill plug is seized and we can't refill it, then you're kind of stuck.

So always remove the fill Plug first. That way you know you could fill the diff back up Now as that drains, let's check the drain plug which most of the time is magnetic and you can see there's some material on here which is normal. We just don't want to see any large flakes or chunks of metal. but this silvery paste is typical wear for a differential so just clean it off all right.

now. with this drained, we could hand tighten that drain plug back in place and then tighten it down the rest of the way with a torque wrench to 18 ftlb. Good! and finally to make sure dirt doesn't get in. I'm just going to hand tighten the fill bolt for now.

So with the differential completely empty now we can go and remove the wheels and pull the axles out. So let's remove all five lug nuts and since we already loosened them, they should come right off. And now let's take the wheel off and slide it under the car. and trust me, it's totally worth doing.

Takes a couple of seconds and it could save your life if a jack stand fails or Falls over the car will fall on the wheel instead of falling on you. so don't skip this step. All right. So now we're good to go here.

What we're going to want to do to remove this axle is remove the drum and then there's two bolts up here that need to be removed and two bolts under here that need to be removed and hopefully the axle comes right out. So we'll start with removing the drum and you want to make sure that your E brake is not engaged. You can see we could spin this freely so the E braake is not engaged, but this is not coming off easily. Luckily there are two holes right here that are threaded so what you're going to do is you're going to get bolts that are the correct thread pitch and get the in there, work them in all the way until you can't anymore and then you're just going to tighten these bolts down little bit on each side and already I can feel it pulling it off just like that and it's a good thing we're doing this because look at all the gear oil that's saturated these brake shoes.

Yep, that's why the brakes didn't feel very good. So with our drum removed, the only thing holding this axle in are four Fasteners and if you take a look behind this backing plate, you could see two Fasteners right here. So let's remove them and these are 12 mm nuts so break them loose and remove them the rest of the way by hand. Same for the bottom nut, break it loose and then loosen the nut the rest of the way by hand.

Now with these two removed, let's swing around to the other side and remove the other nuts and you can see the other two nuts are right there. so remove the top one good and then remove the bottom one and you can see where that 180 to ratchet helps loosen the nut. Even in such a tight place, you don't have to swing that ratchet that much to loosen it up. So with those Fasteners removed what I did is I put a drain pan right here because it's starting to drip and I don't want to get it on the driveway way and at this point our axle should be free.

We'll see. I'm going to try to remove it by hand. it's going to be pretty tight in there. I'm going to expect to probably use that slide hammer to get this off, but it's worth giving it a shot by hand.

Let's try it out. I Have a feeling this is going to be useless, but it's worth a shot. And yeah, this is really tight in here. So just as I figured this is not going to come off by hand, you're going to need a little bit more oomph to pull this out.

So we have our slide hammer kit now. I Get to show you how this works. It's really easy. so we have the actual Slide Hammer part which is this right here so we're going to remove that and then we have two different adapters.

We have this adapter which is a little small so I don't think we're going to be using that, but we have this adapter right here which looks like it should fit on. Beautiful. just like that. So it slides over the studs like that and then all you have to do is thread on three lug nuts to hold it in place.

Make sure it's nice and tight that way we could give it a nice solid pull. Next, we want to thread on the slide hammer and then tighten down the jam nut against the adapter so the slide hammer doesn't loosen by accident. Now just sling the weight to the back of the rod and the momentum will hopefully pull this axle out. Beautiful.

All right. And now we can remove this axle and you just want to use your hand to guide it out that way it's not dragging in that axle tube and we want to be very careful. The splines right here. We want to make sure we don't damage them and don't drag them.

Don't hit them against any of this metal because that could cause major issues. This is what splines into the differential, so just be careful with that and with the axle remove, check this out. You can see that seal is shot right in here. Here is all cracked and no wonder this was leaking.

So good thing we're going to replace this all right. So now let's remove this bad seal with a seal removal tool and all you need to do with this is you get it right behind the seal like that and then you're going to use this as leverage. So you're going to just lift up and it should pop the seal out Just like that, right there. Beautiful! Now one thing I do want to mention is notice the orientation of this.

You can see here these little uh, yellow dots there are on the inside. If we flip this over you can see the yellow dots are on the outside so yellow dots on inside is how this was oriented just in case. If we take a look at our new one, it's actually a little bit different. We have a spring and an opening on this side and the opening always goes inside.

That's where the pressure pushes in and expands the seal so it's going to go in that way. but just in case, always reference this, take a picture, whatever it is. That way you know which way you need to put the new one back in. so our old seal is out and then we have this plate in here which is also cracked a little bit bit.

But this plate is, uh not easy to find. We don't have any extras so we're just going to clean it up and we're going to put that crack facing up and reinstall it. Now you want to quickly clean the area with a towel and get any dirt or grit out of here which could compromise our seal. Okay so with all that cleaned up now what we could do is reinstall this again with that crack facing up that just slides in like that.

So there is our new seal and to drive that seal in, you could use a seal driver or you could just get a big socket like this and you can see that fits right on the outside perfectly. You do not want to push on the inside here. Now we have our new seal and remember what I said. This opening on the new seal always goes towards the back.

You can see how there is a gap in there and a spring. You want the fluid pressure to push that open. so the seal opens up more and seals even better. So opening always goes towards the inside and you just want to push this in by hand to get it as flat and level as possible.

Good and now we can grab our socket and try to evenly Drive the seal in there. Now it's kind of hard to tell but you can see how the bottom here is pushed in more than the top so it's not going in straight. Once you notice it not going in straight, stop right away, stop hitting it in and what we're going to do is tap in the top part of the seal to make it level. so use something like a pin punch which has a flat head so it won't damage the seal and gently tap the seal so that it pushes the top in to make it even with the bottom.

Now we could drive the seal the rest of the way in and you know it's all the way in. When it stops moving and the Hammer sound changes, you could hear the hammer has a higher pitch sound and it's not being driven in anymore so we're good to go. So with the axle seal in, all this stuff is completely saturated in gear oil. I Don't trust these brakes.

We could try to clean them off, but I rather replace the drum brakes so we have brand new shoes that are going to go in. So let's knock this out real quick. and before you remove this anytime you're working on drum brakes I Always recommend taking pictures of where the Springs are and what everything looks like so you have something to reference just in case. Okay, so definitely make sure you still have your safety glasses on when removing these.

Springs They have a lot of spring tension and they could go flying and I don't have a drum brake tool kit with me so I'm just using pliers and stuff I have around to make it work. Now let's clean the gear oil off the brake drum backing plate so we don't contaminate the new brakes. Then we could add a little bit of copper anti-ed to the six touch points on the backing plate and that prevents squeaking so the brakes will work smoothly and you just want to make sure it's a thin coat. All right.

So all the old brake parts have been removed, we clean the backing plate so there's no more gear oil at all and we also lubricated the wear points with some copper for an's another thing I Wanted to show you real quick, Is this right here? It's always a good idea not only to take pictures, but lay out your brake parts in order as you remove them so you can put them back together nice and easy. So I already did a video on how to replace drum brakes. so I'm not going to go in- depth on this. You guys can watch that video, it's down in the description.

if you're interested in this case, let's just get this back together. That way we can get the axle in and get this side done. So first let's get the brick shoes on. starting with the front shoe good and then we can get the rear shoe on.

Next, we can install the bottom spring like that. and then then we want to get the self adjuster in place and let's finish up with installing the top spring. and now our drum brakes are good to go. So now we can install our axle and right here is the wheel bearing.

So if you want to replace your wheel bearing, what you have to do is you have to cut it and then take a chisel and break it free on both sides and then press a new bearing on. Unfortunately, we can't easily get wheel bearings so we have no time for that. We're just going to reuse this and this one feels solid. You can see it's not freely spinning, it doesn't feel gritty.

There's no play in it at all. So we're good to go here. So now when we install the axle, we want to be very careful with these splines and we also want to be very careful not to damage the new axle seal. So try to get the splines right in the middle.

Don't rest the axle on the seal, slowly. move that in all the way. Then we want to get these two bolts right through those holes as we're working this axle in there to fit into that differential. Just like that.

Beautiful. You can see both of those bolts are pushed. It's the same thing on the other side, so we're good to go. Now we can tighten it from the back.

Actually, let's tap the axle in a little bit more so we could get some threads to stick out behind it. Good. Now let's get some medium strength thread Locker on those threads because this is a high vibration area and this holds the axle on so we don't want these to come loose otherwise the wheel could come off while you're driving. Now let's snug these up with a ratchet and tighten each side down a little bit at a time so it evenly seats.

same thing for the other side. Get some thread Locker on there and then evenly tighten them down. And finally, we could torque all four of these nuts to Speck in a crisscross pattern. Now we could add our drum and then you want to spin the wheel to make sure it spins somewhat freely.

You want to feel a little bit of drag from the brake, but not a lot. The self adjuster will do the rest of the work to adjust the brake shoes as you use the car. Now all we need to do is get the wheel back on the axle and I find using my feet under the wheel works best for easily mounting a heavy wheel. And then we want to torque the lug nuts down to spec in a star pattern.

and that's all there is to replacing a leaking axle seal. Now for a quick overview. let's do the other side real fast. First, pop the drum off, next, remove all four nuts behind the backing plate that hold the axle in.

Then we can use the slide hammer to pop that axle out and remove the axle the rest of the way by hand. Now, let's use our seal removal tool to pop out the leaking seal and out with the old and in with the new. So put the new seal in place and then drive that seal in all the way until a bottoms out. Now with the new seal all the way in, let's replace these oil saturated brakes Good! Then we could carefully reinstall the axle making sure it meshes with the differential.

Beautiful. and then we could torque down the nuts on the backing plate that hold the axle in. Finally, let's get the drum on there, then install the wheel and torque it to spec in a star pattern. Good.

And now both axle seals have been replaced. So now we need to fill up the differential and after we do this, we're completely done. So just remove the fill bolt and you want to check the owner's manual for your car for the correct viscosity. In this case, it says we could use 8 W90 And now comes the fun part.

This is where you have to pump a little over 2 quarts of gear oil into the differential. This 80 W90 is pretty thick and you're really going to test your arm strength pumping all this fluid in here. Now you want to keep pumping until it's full and you'll know it's full once gear oil starts dripping out of the fill hole. Just like that, you can see it weeping out and that means we're good to go.

So get that fill bolt in there and let's clean this leaking fluid and then you want to torque this down to 18 ftlb. Good! Now let's get the Jack back under here and lift the car up so we can remove the jack stands. and then we could slowly let the car back on the ground and finish up by removing the wheel chalks. So there you go.

That's everything you need to know on how to replace leaky axle seals. All right dude. good seeing you. Thanks! Good luck tomorrow.

Get out of here. Oh yeah, I'm going to send you an update video. We're going to win the show! So Chris we made it to the car show and I've got great news. The rear axle seals you fixed are still all sealed up.

An absolutely incredible job on the rear axle seals because they're not leaking and if they did that would have been bad news because the judges were looking very meticulous at this thing. So thank you so much for your hard work getting those things sealed up and getting me over the final finish line. Thanks! Chris So there you go. That's how your Place leaking axle seals.

Hopefully the video was helpful if it was. Remember to give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing and all the tools and products I used in this video are linked down in the description so you could easily find them. Also, if you want to see Donut Media's video of their Suzuki X90 traveling across the country and see if you wins the car show, just click their video up on the screen to check it out.