1998 October 31 (Saturday)
Since the final drive oil didn’t look too good to my untrained eye I decided to pull the rear end apart. The goal was to check gears, bearings, and replace all seals. I took the rear end to Groeger Special Tooling where Joe Groeger did most of the disassembly. I did the cleaning.
Final drive disassembly
Final drive on bench
Brake parts, coupling gear, pinion
The brake shoes, coupling hub and threaded ring have been removed. The cover will come off next.
FD gears
bevel gear set
This is a picture of the removed bevel gear set before the bearings are removed and the gears cleaned. You can tell that the oil looks quite dirty. I’ll definitely remember to change rear-end oil more frequently. Once cleaned I checked the wear marks on the gears: pretty good.
Bead blasted case
Cleaned FD case
Cleaned FD case
I cleaned everything in solvent then washed and dried the parts. The bearings have been removed and checked. They look, feel, and sound good. They’re clean and lightly oiled, stored in zip-lock bags to keep them that way.
Out comes the duct tape to block some holes before the housing is bead blasted. I should have bead blasted it before pulling it apart. Oh well. I’ll be careful.
The case looked new after bead blasting and washing. It took several rinse cycles to get all of the beads out of the case. I dried the case with compressed air then wiped it down with WD-40. A nylon screw was in the final drive breather where a nut was originally tack welded to hold a cover. Joe found a spare cover, screw, and nut from a broken housing. I will need to epoxy or weld the nut onto the breather to attach the cover.