Heard some odd noises from the right rear side of my 05 F350 today. Brought it into the shop at work today and noticed my right rear brake backing plate is rusting and a pin for the park brake shoes has pulled through. I picked up a set of Dorman replacement backing plates today and plan on replacing them this weekend. My question is for people that have replaced there wheel seals already. Should I go with a motorcraft seal(2C3Z1177AB) or a SKF seal(29472)? I am a heavy duty mech and at work we swear by SKF seals and have a great success rate with them.

Also any SKF seal I have used at work has a seal driver listed on the box for installation and we have drivers for all the common big truck seals. For guys that have replaced their seals have you used a special driver to drive the seal in whether it was a motorcraft or aftermarket seal?

 

If you have good luck with some thing at work and know the product
then I would stick with it. The one thing that gets over looked is putting
some clean oil on the lip of the new seals and/or not driving then in the
right way.

Sean

 

I used the Motorcraft seals when I replaced my backing plates. I didn’t use a driver, I just tapped it in with a hammer. Keep the seal as square as possible as you install it. You may have a socket large enough to install it. I would make sure the hub doesn’t have any sharp edges on it because if I remember correctly the seal has a seal around the outside of it that you don’t want to mess up.

I would also check the parking brake cables to make sure they are free, and also clean up the lever that pushes the shoes.

Remember to pack the wheel bearings with grease before your reassemble. You probably know all this already, but while I was typing I thought I would add it.

 

Regardless of which seal you use-----it'll do the job, as long as your housing is not grooved---of course, then you can probably buy a redi-sleeve for it. I'm and old Ford Tech and I always pack the back (inside) of the seal with grease to insure the spring doesn't jump off the lip, if I don't have the correct driver and have to improvise.

 

Ive used a TON of SKF seals on E350 econoline vans at my bus company. never had any issues with the SKF, and actually the stock motorcraft ones were failing at 60-70K miles. go figure, seems like things are built to fail from the factory.....

 

I'd probably go with the SKF myself