[cuppatea]

Hi all,

Leaking oil from RHS front swivel hub. Drive shaft axle seal in the back of the swivel hub I see from reading here.
300,000km
I'm going to replace wheel bearings both sides anyway.

Double checking I will replace the seals and bearings parts in GREEN below.
RED not required to be replaced?
What about the Needle Bearing YELLOW?

Lastly, genuine Nissan (Nizzbits) for everything or a complete kit from somewhere like roadrunneroffroad.com.au ?
I personally use genuine on my Patrol virtually everywhere. Maybe aftermarket has better design seals - not sure?

 

[JFF45]

The Trail Safe axle seals from Road Runner are considered better than stock.

 

[62woollybugger]

At 300k km I'd be getting the full kit from Road Runner & I think you can upgrade to the Trailsafe seals for a bit extra. Kit has all bearings & seals for swivel hub & wheel bearings.

 

[Overboard]

Use any kit that uses Japanese made bearings, brand doesn't matter but Road Runner is as good as any. Throw the standard seals in the bin and use Trail Safe seals.

The spindle axle bearing comes as part of the kit so change it anyway, even though there is probably no significant wear on it.

 

[cuppatea]

Excellent thank you. Ordered all the parts yesterday from RROR. I asked if they can make a kit up with the Trailsafe seals - no significant saving they tell me, so can't happen.

 

[cuppatea]

UPDATE: Lower LHS Kingpin bearing found collapsed. Superficial damage to it's mount luckily. No kingpin sealing caps to be seen. Only one kingpin shim. This is why I don't let mechanics or steering/wheel experts touch my car.
The single shim and the wrecked bearing explains the leaking axle shaft seal...

The shims come in sizes - 0.075mm, 0.127mm, 0.254mm, 0.762mm and 0.5mm. Nizzbit shim set out of stock. What have others done here that works well?

 

[62woollybugger]

Setting the pre-load on the king pins is a matter of trial and error. You could make some from thin plastic, from a food package etc, & see how that feels, then buy shims accordingly. Try for slightly tighter, rather than loose. The shims aren't expensive, even from Nissan dealers, if the dealer's good, they might even let you change them if you need to.

 

[cuppatea]

Cheers. I was brainstorming it myself. Was going to either use a couple of sets of cheap feeler gauges to obtain the preload (then buy the right factory shim), or I'll punch out some 0.3mm alu sheet and luck combinations of 0.3 or 0.6 top and bottom. The range of preload was fairly broad from memory (5-15N).

 

[cuppatea]

Those swivel caps/plugs are a laugh by the way.
I had none when I dismantled. Did some reading with some saying "toyota doesn't use them", "never put them back, never had any trouble", "they keep this or that in or out so they are good".
My rational for getting them is to catch the diff oil "if" I get another seal fail/leak from contaminating the lower king pin bearing (mine was r00ted).

Bought x4 for the silly high cost they are and the genuine ones don't even have the dimples (or whatever method the old ones had?) for the cut outs to drive out the bearing cups. So pop the new ones in and there are two gaps at each side. The bearing cups when driven in cover these but far from being a sealed setup from leaks etc.
I've put two dobs of auto sealant to fill each hole.

I don't have a good recommendation for anyone else in the situation. Maybe just buy x1 each side for the bottom of the swivel hub. Top one seems pointless. Even if water gets past the wipers or oil past the axle seal it will have a hard time reaching the top kingpin bearing (imo).
Wish someone knocked out a hundred of these after market for $20 for 4.

 

[cuppatea]

A few comments on the job after finally completing one side today.

• All of it is achievable. Much easier after doing one side and seeing what's actually involved as the manuals are tricky to gauge difficulty.
• My hub nut tool from Patrolapart/Nizz barely fit over the spindle/stub axel threads. Had to file and dremel grind it bigger.
• Kingpin/swivel hub bearings probably won't last 300,000km so if you haven't been in there I say do it. The bearing cups were nearly warn through to axel spheres . That would have been a fairly massive disaster.
• Getting the correct preload on the kingpin is a bit of a fiddle. I ended up using feeler gauges as temporary shim both sides of the kingpin caps, used only 2 of 4 bolts and snug the bolts down firm without full torque. Used a baggage scale from the Reject shop for $10. I got shim stock from Bursens Automotive for $33. Comes in 2-10 thou sheets of brass. Cut them out with scissors and hole punch on old plastic chopping board. Got mine around 1kg pull from the tie rod hole (spec 0.5 -1.5). I had 0.5mm one end, somewhere around 0.3 the other. There was no way to achieve 0.4 each end symmetric.
• Getting the hub nut preload was another game. I did it by the book with the baggage scale but when I got the wheel on there was play top/bottom (clunking) so there wasn't enough. Put the book away and tightened to the next adjacent lock screw hole. There are 4 threaded holes in the hub nut to use that are offset a little. I didn't try flipping the hub nut actually... The lock plate was no point flipping any which way. Did a few kms at 110km and the hub is the same lightly warm to touch as the other side.
• Don't forget to wipe the greasy finger marks off the disk rotor. That explains pulling to one side on heavy breaking

 

[62woollybugger]

You don't have to have shim sizes symmetrical from one side to the other, but top & bottom on each side must be. I don't think it will hurt to be a bit tighter than spec' if you need to to get both shims the same, top & bottom. Not enough bearing preload is one thing people think could be a cause of the dreaded death wobbles.