Preparing the Donor

One of the attractions to this project is that we get to reuse our trusty 80's running gear and frame and suspension for our FJ-UTE.  We've owned it almost 5 years at this time.  The only unplanned maintenance issues have been:

• 2011 - Dead Starter (we replaced a cheap aftermarket unit with an OEM unit and all has been good since)
• 2012 - Power Steering (the face/flange at the pump's high pressure hose outlet turned out to be hacked to hell by a previous owner and then JB-welded, when it blew, I replaced the pump and high pressure hose both with OEM parts and we added a front-mounted fluid cooler and have been running great since.)
• Friday 10/17/2014 I failed my VA safety inspection since there was oil on my Drivers-Side-Rear brakes, seems my axle seals had blown.

Seeing as I needed it fixed and inspection passed in the next few days so I could comfortably take a road trip to our Fall Crawl this weekend, I called Ryan at On the Road Again Mobile Mechanic to see how soon he could fit me in. Turns out, a Sunday work day was in the cards as long as I came to him - deal!

Wheel off, ready to begin:

In reverse order, at the end of the parts swap we found that my rear axle's breather tube's, er, breather valve was all clogged up.  This was possibly the cause of the blow out since the extra pressure of the heated gear oil and air didn't have anywhere to go but out the seals.  Ryan also dropped some wisdom on me: if you have a full floating rear (which I do) and factory lockers (which I do) you MUST engage the rear locker before pulling the axle shafts or you'll drop the locking coupler in the diff and have pain and sadness in your life (ie: torch cutting comes next).

The drivers side axle splines shown here were in good shape:

The wheel bearings were both roller bearing type set at angles to each other. They were in great shape especially considering the truck is right at 300,000 miles on the odometer (and many of those are hard off road  miles)

After cleaning the bearings fully, we (and by 'we' I mean 'Ryan') repacked the bearings with his favorite German grease and after cleaning the disc brakes and parking brakes and spindle put it all back together.  Here is the spindle, also looking good, no thread problems and all cleaned up nicely. The drum style brake is the parking brake, the new "inner seal" is pressed just inside the spindle opening below (the outer seal is pressed into the hub):

So, on my follow up visit to the inspection station yielded the desired results: safety inspection passed.  I'll be sure to keep an eye on my breather valve and we shouldn't have to do this fix for a long time.