Rear Hubs - guess everything eventually wears out

I was tightening up the rear brakes of my semi-daily driver yesterday
('65 Beetle) and was disappointed to see that both sides were nice and
wet. Yep, the hubs are AGAIN leaking. I don't drive the car that
much any more but it is discouraging to have to replace the seals
every 1000 miles or so. I have even had some fairly good (AC)
mechanics try it and for a while it would stay dry but after not too
long a while it would again start to leak. I suspect that the parts
are just wearing out too much and have too much play.
It didn't help last June when I had adjusted the rear brakes a tad
too tight and they got REALLY hot. I stopped, let them cool, loosened
them up, but they started to leak. So replaced the seals yet again
and it seemed to hold until about 2 weeks ago.

Any thoughts? This '65 is not the car I want to put lots of $$
into. It is a conglomeration of multiple vehicles. My '64 is the one
I want to fix up perfectly and keep for club meetings and shows. It
still has only 90k miles on it.

KWW
'65 Beetle (The IOC)
'64 Beetle (Blue Wave)

G_Group wrote:

> I was tightening up the rear brakes of my semi-daily driver yesterday
> ('65 Beetle) and was disappointed to see that both sides were nice and
> wet. Yep, the hubs are AGAIN leaking. I don't drive the car that
> much any more but it is discouraging to have to replace the seals
> every 1000 miles or so. I have even had some fairly good (AC)
> mechanics try it and for a while it would stay dry but after not too
> long a while it would again start to leak. I suspect that the parts
> are just wearing out too much and have too much play.
> It didn't help last June when I had adjusted the rear brakes a tad
> too tight and they got REALLY hot. I stopped, let them cool, loosened
> them up, but they started to leak. So replaced the seals yet again
> and it seemed to hold until about 2 weeks ago.
>
> Any thoughts? This '65 is not the car I want to put lots of $$
> into. It is a conglomeration of multiple vehicles. My '64 is the one
> I want to fix up perfectly and keep for club meetings and shows. It
> still has only 90k miles on it.

IIRC, the rear wheel seal runs on the outer spacer (part number
111 501 303A) rather than on the rear axle itself.

Premature seal failure usually means that the spacer is grooved,
and needs replacing.

John

On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 20:57:41 +0100, John Henderson
> wrote:

> G_Group wrote:
>
>> I was tightening up the rear brakes of my semi-daily driver yesterday
>> ('65 Beetle) and was disappointed to see that both sides were nice and
>> wet. Yep, the hubs are AGAIN leaking. I don't drive the car that
>> much any more but it is discouraging to have to replace the seals
>> every 1000 miles or so. I have even had some fairly good (AC)
>> mechanics try it and for a while it would stay dry but after not too
>> long a while it would again start to leak. I suspect that the parts
>> are just wearing out too much and have too much play.
>> It didn't help last June when I had adjusted the rear brakes a tad
>> too tight and they got REALLY hot. I stopped, let them cool, loosened
>> them up, but they started to leak. So replaced the seals yet again
>> and it seemed to hold until about 2 weeks ago.
>>
>> Any thoughts? This '65 is not the car I want to put lots of $$
>> into. It is a conglomeration of multiple vehicles. My '64 is the one
>> I want to fix up perfectly and keep for club meetings and shows. It
>> still has only 90k miles on it.
>
> IIRC, the rear wheel seal runs on the outer spacer (part number
> 111 501 303A) rather than on the rear axle itself.
>
> Premature seal failure usually means that the spacer is grooved,
> and needs replacing.
>
> John

I second that.

J.

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On 09/01/11 13:58, P.J.Berg wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 20:57:41 +0100, John Henderson
> > wrote:
>
>> G_Group wrote:
>>
>>> I was tightening up the rear brakes of my semi-daily driver yesterday
>>> ('65 Beetle) and was disappointed to see that both sides were nice and
>>> wet. Yep, the hubs are AGAIN leaking.
--snippp--
>>
>> IIRC, the rear wheel seal runs on the outer spacer (part number
>> 111 501 303A) rather than on the rear axle itself.
>>
>> Premature seal failure usually means that the spacer is grooved,
>> and needs replacing.
>
> I second that.

Me too. Seal mating surface (in this case the out surface of the spacer) is
machined and then ground to very fine smoothness, almost a mirror (Ra
~0.3um). Any imperfection wear out the sealing lip of the (new) seal very
fast and old seal tends to wear grooves into spacer.

Local machining shop probably can help, polishing old ones is simple job,
but it still might be cheaper to buy new ones like PJ said.

( If someone wants to know more, see pages like
http://www.rlhudson.com/Shaft%20Seal...gn-shaft3.html
which have some background of axles, surface finish and seal design.)
--
Tuomas - VWs:'63 typ14, '65 typ34 & '61 typ2