Morris Minor Owners Club

My car has been stood just over a week. I stuck my head underneath to take a look today and saw this. The patch is directly underneath the propshaft and there were a couple of drippers on the propshaft so I presume it is the seal.



Does that mean the seal is gone or could it be more than just that? Any suggestions on what it could be so I can investigate it further would be helpful.

If it is the seal. Where can I get one? and how difficult are they to do?

Cheers

Matt

It's not unusual........ Changing the seal is not all that easy - so if you can live with the drips - and are prepared to top-up the gearbox now and again - live with it!

Put a tray underneath the car if you don't want to mark your driveway. When in use some of the oil might spray onto the underside of the car protecting it from the elements.

Are we talking about a gearbox seal here or a diff seal? it looks like the oil is dripping off the rear of the propshaft in the photo! or am I looking at it wrong?

"it looks like the oil is dripping off the rear of the propshaft in the photo"
Only if it's "the rear of the propshaft" near to the silencer and the conjunction of the chassis legs/X member...

The leak is gearbox end

The tailshaft seal isnt to bad to change, you will need to take the prop off & the seal is in a steel pressing which can be knocked off with a chisel. the new one can then be tapped on with a large socket ,piece of tube etc
this should be the part
http://morrisminorspares.co.uk/shop/pro ... 9777eb6ea8

Since the gearbox uses engine oil, why not try one of those magic moose wee concoctions that promises to stop oil leaks in engines? I've used it few times, with 50/50 success, and for a few bucks it may be worth a try...

magic moose

Well thats a good name for a product and not one I have heard before.

A drip tray is not in my opinion a solution. Mogwai is quite right when he writes replace the seal. I replaced mine recently when I had the gearbox out to do the crankshaft seal. It still however required a quite a bit of persuasion to remove the old gearbox tailshaft seal.It’s quite a tight fit. With the gearbox still in the car it will be slightly more difficult. To make life easier see if you find a mate with a pit. The propshaft is easy to remove but mark the position of both ends with Tipp-ex or similar before removal and take a digital photo just to be on the safe side. Use two spanners to undo the four bolts as you will not get a socket in there. Slide the shaft forward and lower the rear end. It then just pulls out to the rear.
Replacement is the reverse procedure but before you do so, take the opportunity to check the universal joints. Treat your propshaft gently-Do not attempt to paint the propshaft and put it back exactly as it was.
Believe me as I have had terrible problems with propshaft unbalance. Some twit had painted it-probably with a 6” brush! I had to replace the propshaft in the end.
While you are under the car check area around the speedo cable fitting. In my case there was also a leak as the nylon mount was loose. There was as much oil coming out there and I thought it was just the gearbox tailshaft seal.
Declan

Changing the seal has to be the way to go.

Not sure that painting the propshaft will affect the balance, knocking off a balance weight while doing it may be though.

10852sm wrote:Not sure that painting the propshaft will affect the balance, knocking off a balance weight while doing it may be though.

Mine has a thick layer of underseal sprayed on one side only. It seems to vibrate very slightly at motorway speeds - I keep meaning to get around to scraping it off.

beware the comments above about changing the seal - it will NOT be easy with the box still in the car!

Changing the gearbox rear oil seal is easy. There is no need to take the gearbox out of the car. All you need to get it off is a hacksaw, a hammer and a steel chisel. (And the ability to be able to cut a slot in the old seal without cutting the end of the gearbox.)

newagetraveller wrote:Changing the gearbox rear oil seal is easy. There is no need to take the gearbox out of the car. All you need to get it off is a hacksaw, a hammer and a steel chisel. (And the ability to be able to cut a slot in the old seal without cutting the end of the gearbox.)

I agree - with all due respect to other views - I did this job on my Midget with the gearbox in-situ, and once the car was up in the air with decent access underneath, the job took about half an hour, and no tricky bits at all really! I found a sharp chisel was ideal, I used an old half-inch wood chisel with a decent edge on it.

Just shows, experiences vary.....

One thing you should be aware of ... if the replaced seal starts to leak a few months after you fit it then the problem isnt nessecarily with a low quality seal .. it is quite possible that the bearings at the back of your gearbox are stuffed, the wobble that they create is then causing the seal to fail.

As is the case with my gearbox :s

I was up at seven o'clock this morning and out underneath the car by half past and it is the tailshaft seal that is leaking.

I ordered a new one. Just wondering if any of you guys have any final tips or words of advice for me before I do it.

Have a tray ready to catch the oil that pours out of the back of the gearbox when you remove the propshaft. Guess who learned this the hard way?

Drain the gearbox oil first, and when removing prop from gearbox you'll still need lots of newspaper down and a container to catch the remaining oil. I've done half a dozen or so of these seals and some are much easier than others!
Before doing the seal job, check if the prop nose is loose in the output bearing. If it has excessive clearance then you need to replace the bush in the back of the gearbox (remove gearbox tail extension, knock out old bush and press new one in, which then needs to be reamed to size!). If you ignore the excessive clearance the propshaft will run out giving bad vibrations, limiting the life of the seal but more importantly, limiting the life of the gearbox bearings.

The seal housing is crimped in a couple of places at the front end (nearest the engine). There is no guarantee where the crimp marks are so there may be one hiding at the top. When the crimps are removed (prefferably not with an angle grinder) the seal should tap off - Don't use a sharp chisel unless you want extra damage on the gearbox mating surface - a blunt screwdriver is better.
Some of these are very tight - hopefully yours will tap off easily.
Replace using a piece of softwood over the full face of the housing and a hammer - don't hammer the seal housing itself!
Sometimes the new seal housing will be a pig to push on, in which case it may be worth to give up half way and remove it, so you can clean up the gearbox with some emery and make it less tight to go on. The risk of a tight one is that it gets tighter as you go along, so to get it all the way you have to use a bigger hammer... Which then deforms the seal housing

Finally got around to changing the seal today. Hopefully it'll do the trick and stop the leak.

Found a great device to put between the new seal and the hammer when tapping the seal on. They call it 'insulation tape' it was just the thing