Morris Minor Owners Club

ello, before the car gos back on its wheels for the last time im gonna replace the leaking seals, seams straight forward in the book or have i got the rose tinted on again, pinion and the big round axle casing gasket, is it straight forward unbolt and change?,cheers steve

there are 4 seals on the axle, 2 where the half shafts go in, one where the diff fits to the casing and one on the end of the pinion drive. The halfshaft/bearing seals are easy (so long as they don't leak on to your brakes!) and so is hte big one for hte diff - I used some gasket sealer on mine just to be sure. THe pinion one needs the big nut on the pinion to be undone which seems to be easiest with the flange in a big vice and using a scaffolding pole on the socket wrench. All pretty straightforward if you have the kit - no chance if you don't!

The diff pinion is set to a value to pre-load the gears in the diff - if you change this the diff may whine and wear. If it'snot leaking too badly i would leave it alone.

The Pinion nut is set to a torque of 140 foot lbs and
it is perfectly ok to remove the oil seal and renew provided that you
do the nut up to this figure assuming that the axle was set up properly
in the first place! Remember that this oil seal is NOT the same as the
rear hub seals and that the near side hub is a left hand thread.

thanks lads,im hoping to undo the big nut on diff then unsrcew the bolts round the casing and it comes off without anything going" ping" and shooting across the garage floor,steve

Aye - but you need to draw out the half-shafts first !

STEVE.. you would be better off just removing the diff unit and
then locking the pinion flange in a hefty vice BEFORE you try to
undo the pinion nut. A couple of bolts throgh the pinion flange and
locked in the vice should suffice but it is surprisingly easy to bend
the flange so be careful what you do.

I repeat my advice - if that seal is not leaking badly - leave it alone !! Worth checking if the nut is tight - if it has worked loose then you may as well go ahead !

Willie wrote:STEVE.. you would be better off just removing the diff unit and
then locking the pinion flange in a hefty vice

.. And use a good length of waterpipe on the end of a socket bar (or impact driver if you have one).