My truck 04 F350 srw 6.0 4x4 75,000 miles. I had my truck on a lift for a tire change and was doing an inspection. I found the driverside axle seal is not seated and is just hanging on the axle. My question is how hard is this seal to change. What all is involved.

the only other thing that I found wrong was a stablizer bar link has a bad bushing. The ball joints looked good.

 

any body?????

 

Well if its the seal thats at the end of the axle tube you have a lot of work ahead of you. Basically you have to pull the axle. To do that you've got to take the hubs off, wheel bearing too. Then you can pull the axle out and replace the seal. If I was you and that far into it I would do everything on that side at one time. I mean ball joints and u-joints too. It would suck to get that far into it to replace the seal and a month later have to do the same thing if you needed a ball joint.

 

A good shop can pull your hub and reinstall it in under 1.5 hours, Just pay the 90.00 to have it done.

 

I will do the work myself. I have all the tools.

I will go ahead and change the ball joint while I am there. Probably do the axle ujoint while I am there.

 

rbloodhound...probably a smart idea. I myself am one of those people who would rather fix it all when I"m right there into it than go half way and end up doing the job twice. There is a really good writeup here on the site about doing your ball joints. Thats what give me the final nudge to do it myself. Its not that hard of a job just a little time consuming. Make sure you've got a 12 pack and bandaids handy so you can celebrate your victory when you're done!

 

After doing my ball joints and all associated seals, etc, I decided that I would add the face of that particular seal to my "places to lubricate" list. Kind of a poor design, if you ask me. At 90,000 miles, both of mine were separated and torn up.

 

I'll do the driver side. After that I will get the parts to gather to do the other side. I will spend a little more money and get moog ball joints and use spicer U joints. I will also replace the drive shaft u joints.

What oil goes in the front end?

 

Vegetable oil

 

I just did my Dana 50 front axel on my 2000 Superduty 4x4. I had noticed that seal your talking about when I bought my truck with 43,000 miles on it. Nothing was leaking out so I left it for another 40,000. No problems.
The oil seals are on the inside at the pumpkin. The seals at the end of the axels do nothing more than keep dust out of the axel tubes.

 

Read about the hanging seal on another post and looked at mine, and sure enough, mine is hanging also. On both the left and right side. I wish i would have read about this 2 months ago as my 3 year/36 month warranty has expired. Will probably not get to it until i do the needle bearings around 60,000 miles.

2005 F250 XLT CC FX 5.4 Auto