Hi again,

Had some pulsing in the rear brakes... figured it was the rotors so i dropped the IRS. Dropped the IRS on my son's 85 S3 a few years back, so familiar with the routine. But had a surprise when i disconnected the drive shaft... about 3 or 4 ounces of fluid dropped out on the floor... but after that nothing, no drips, nothing. So got the IRS out and see that their is some kind of sealer smeared over top the pinion seal...



Anyone seen this before? is this a regular practice? or some kind of hack? Also there is no sign of leaking on the diff or on the IRS around the pinion seal area. With the IRS level on the floor, the diff appears to be full.

Thanks,

 

Hi Steve,
Did the pinion yoke remove easily from the pinion shaft? If it did, there is a good chance the gear lube was seeping past the splines of the two pieces and making a spot on the PO's floor. I personally have not run into this issue, but I can see where a loose fitting yoke would cause a leak. The only true sealing of the diff housing and the rotating pinion/yoke is on the circumference of the yoke. A snug fit between pinion shaft and yoke will normally provide a satisfactory seal in that area.

Dave

 

Whilst looking into redoing my rear gears myself, ( which I ended up farming out) there are several notes I took, one included making sure there was a sewer on the splines themselves as fluid is know to work it’s way out that way! Hopefully that makes sense, I already took tonight’s meds…..

 

Sewer should say sealant, at a minimum some Loctite

 

That's exactly what Jaguar does on the transfer case of X Types, there is a TSB out for leaking transfer cases to put sealant under the nut and retighten.

 

I purchased the coupe 19 yrs ago from someone who had it serviced by jaguar from new... so this was probably done by jaguar. This may have been done to cover up a junior mechanics mistake... if you don't tighten the pinion nut correctly, overtighten it, you can ruin the seal... along with collapsing the pinion crush sleeve which would require a diff rebuild.... I hope that is not the case... but it sure is weird. I'm going to remove the pinion nut and see how much torque it requires... should be around 25 lbs.. if it too much more than that, this will be more than a break job.

Thanks,

 

Steve,
Crushing the pinion sleeve to the proper bearing pre-load takes in the neighborhood of 200ft lbs or more, it will take much more than 25ft lbs to loosen the nut.

Dave

 

Dave,

Oops! read the procedure wrong.... should take 25 to 30 INCH pounds to rotate the pinion nut, not remove it.. any more than that and something wrong internally.

Also, my manual says 120 ft lbs to set the crush sleeve.. so once "crushed" it should take a lot less to remove?

Thanks,

 

The inch pound spec is with the pinion and nothing else in the case. You're measuring the drag on the bearings of the pinion alone.

If you're adding sealant under the nut, mark the position of the nut relative to the flange, take the nut off with impact ( just because it's fast and you probably won't be able to get it off any other way) then torque by hand back to where the nut was before.

Make sure the wheels can't rotate, it's easy to drive a car off axle stands if a wheel is on the ground simply by turning the pinion with a breaker bar. You might need an assistant to keep the brakes applied.

 

Steve,
120ft lbs may or may not crush the sleeve you're using correctly, the goal is the bearing preload which is measured with a small beam-type torque wrench in in/lbs. You have to "sneak up" on the preload by rotating the pinion nut in very, very small increments and testing with the torque wrench until you get the preload you want.

I'll offer this website to guide you on proper torque/preload numbers. The Salisbury is most like a Dana 44. Usually, when removing a nut it will "break" (just begin to turn) at close to the installation torque, but somewhat lower.

https://www.sierragear.com/setup-torque-specs/

Dave

 

Hi again,

Went through the rear assembly and replaced rotors, calipers and shocks and hand brake pads... As I was going thru it, I realized my error in assuming it was a pinion seal leak.. nothing to do wit the pinion seal, leaking thru the spline on the pinion shaft as LT1 suggested. Marked the position of the nut, removed it, cleaned out the old sealer, resealed and replaced the nut. Will put the assembly back in tomorrow.

Ran into a problem with the hand brake calipers. One of the pads was de-laminated so had to replace the pads. When i tried to adjust the caliper for the new pads, they were frozen. had to completely disassemble them and soak the adjustment bolt and "ratchet nut" ,not sure what it is called, in PB blaster... with some patience and a small smooth jaw pipe wrench was able to get them loose. put it all back together, adjusted the pads with a great deal of slack and installed them. Was actually surprised when after acuating the calipers about a dozen times, the automatic adjusters actually did there job and closed up.

Thanks for your help

Steve

 

Very nice looking cage assembly Steve! Sounds like you did everything right and I'm glad all the pieces came together in the end.

Dave