Pinion seal leaking, not the usual leak.

[PFranzese]

My pinion seal on the rear axle started to leak after the gears in my truck were changed under the recall for having 4. 10's with a manual trans. The leak started a while after and I just figured the seal was going bad after seeing how common the pinion leaks are, so I decided to wait until I started to see drops on the driveway before changing it. After 40k miles the leak never got worse but the bottom of the diff was always wet. I never saw a drop in the driveway so I wasn't to concerned. Today I decided to go ahead and take a closer look and change the seal. To my surprise, when the yoke was removed the seal was in perfect shape as well as the yoke. So why do I have oil everywhere? I took a good look at the seal, the rubber was dry. The outer metal body of the seal was wet, when I removed the seal it appears that there was no silicon used on the outer surface and it was weaping oil between the case and the seal body. That explains why the leak was not getting worse.



Moral of the story, always put a little silicone around the seal body before driving it home.