4 weeks ago I replace the Left Rear Axle hub on my '01 Discovery. The project seemed to go well and I have not had any leaks of diff fluid ever since.

Today I got home from work and smelled something funny. I have Royal Purple all over the inside of the wheel.

The hub was a rebuilt one from RoverLandParts.

Is the only leak/failure point the front o-ring? Or does the hub have an internal seals that may have gone bad?

It was a lot of work getting old one off and new one on and I am thinking I should buy new next time.

I look forward to hearing thoughts on
1) where can the leak come from (other than 0-ring)?
2) is there another issue that I should consider besides the hub (this is definitely not brake fluid)?

Thanks
Matt

 

one of my 1st issues i had with my DII was a leaking passenger side rear hub

there are two places where gear oil can leak from. The axle casing or the actual hub itself. The front hub on a 2001 DII i recently serviced had bearing grease inside the hub... however the rear of my DII has gear oil.

It turned out that i was I was not leaking gear oil from the sealed hub unit but it was leaking from in between the axle hub casing.

This was due to an imperfection in the edge of the groove where the hub mates with the axle case. I literally looked like someone took a flat head screw driver, a hammer, and they did a chisel type action with two strikes at the area where the red arrow is pointing to (in grey)



i tried RTV on the inside, the out side, all around the hub, a new o ring for each of the 3 attempts and i finally ended up grinding that imperfection down until it was no longer preventing a "flush" mating surface. Then I use some jb weld to fill it in and smooth it back out to be uniform with the rest of the case and I put everything back together...

It worked and i only had a one or two drops of gear oil every few days. not enough to get on any part of the brakes. then i added white shepherd stop leak in the rear axle and it hasnt leaked since.

I know this may not be your issue but it is what i dealt with.

 

I don't think they can rebuild the hubs, they can only really just clean them up and paint them. There is a seal in the hub that goes bad. Call them and have them send you a new hub tell them it is leaking. They will then hopefully send you the best one they have.

 

thanks guys, when i take it off i will check for imperfections where the oring meets axle case. otherwise, i will need to assume its the hub. not fun as i spent 10 bucks on a new hub nut, a ton of time doing the switch, and bought the $25 bottle of loctite that LR suggests in their service update on the axle spline.

i'll repost how it goes once i get it off.