SWIVEL HUB REPLACEMENT
It would be fair to say I was getting a little bored with the trail of EP90 and swivel grease fanning out around the inside of my tyres, up the inner wings and pooling outside my house. I dare say I would have left if a little longer but with an MOT on its way and a dodgy wheel bearing (and replacement hubs in the shed) I thought I'd give it a go. Its pretty straight forward to do, if not messy. Prior to starting I had bought a 52mm hub nut box spanner to do the job. I also bought swivel hub refurbish kits from an online store. This proved to be a waste of time as I eventually binned the gaskets and just used silicone gasket which I have found to be way more reliable anyway.
Note, I have not done the step-by-step approach with photo's of everything. It's fairly straight forward if you take your time and Haynes Manuals actually cover this well, as do several web sites.
Make life easier, Jack up the front end and put it on axle stands then drain the front diff oil and the hubs. You can see the work chrome swivel above (with a rotten disc guard).
Remove the brake calliper and tie it up somewhere safe. If you drop it the weight will break the brake pipe. Use a ball joint splitter and loosen the ball joints.
(Note: if your trying to loosen the top mounting swivel pin so you can remove the brake pipe bracket, then put a jack under the hub and take the weight. This way, when you undo the two bolts it won't leak oil/grease every where from the swivel seal and you won't need to top up your hubs!)
Then start stripping the hub assembly. It's really straight forward. remove outer cap, remove circlip from end of shaft, remove 52mm lock nut/lock tab/2nd lock nut, then slide off outer hub disc assembly. When you get that far you need to look behind the disc guard where the old swivel hub bolts to the axle casing. Remove the 6 or 7 (?) 14mm bolts and out it comes complete with drive shaft and CV. Note, all together this will be very heavy!
Clean everything up now. This is a messy job if one-shot grease was used. Then reassemble without the swivel seal in place to test the pre-load on the top swivel bearing. You need a spring balance (hooked scales) to test that the resistance to the hub turning is around 4kg (don't quote me on that, check the manual). You put the swivel hook through the trailing ball joint arm to measure this. If its tight, you need less shims, if its slack you need more shims. When your happy with that then you can re assemble with gaskets and grease packed bearings. Above is the new one rebuilt and ready to go back in. You can see the rust pitted old one that was leaking badly. It wouldn't have been worth putting a new seal on one this bad.
When
you have it all assembled, (remember that your tightening up the wheel bearings
when you put the two 52mm lock nuts on) make sure everything is torque'd
up ("tight") then turn the leading end of the disc outwards so you can put the
oil/grease of choice in the filler hole with ease. if you don't turn the leading
edge of the disc out then you can't get the grease in for hitting the swivel hub
inside.
What to put in? Well that's up to you. I use one-shot as I was hoping to fit them and leave them alone (unlikely I know!). Some use 50/50 mix of one-shot with EP90 so you can still drain them if you need to. Whilst others swear by EP90.
Remember to put the oil back in your axel before you drive off.........
Short cuts!
Two other ways exist for changing the swivel seals if the hubs are still in good condition, these are:
1. Cutting new seal: Remove seal retaining plate, cut of old seal. Put new "cut" seal in place with cut towards the top and seal in with silicone and replace plate.
2. Not cutting new seal: Drain Diff oil. Remove calliper & tie out of the way. Remove ball joints. Loosen swivel hub bolts from axel. Slide out complete hub with shaft (it's bloody heavy !) and stand on its end. Remove plate & seal. Replace with new seal and refit. This will take 20 minutes if everything comes out without problems.