Last year, about March or so I did the brakes on my Expy and noticed the passenger side rear axle seal was leaking. Not too bad, just a little dampness back there. At the time I decided that it wasn't bad enough to warrent changing it.

Fast forward to Sunday, I was heading into town to do some grocery shopping and I started getting a weird howling sound from the right side. It would only do it when I was off the gas, but it was VERY loud and sounded like a mixture between metal-on-metal brakes and a squealing fan belts. As soon as I'd hit the gas it'd go away or if I turned the wheel at certain angles it'd go away. The brakes made no difference on the sound at all. So I figured it was the front. I thought maybe something was stuck in the suspension (twig or rock?) and rubbing on the rotor. At the store I got down and checked the front... looked good, nothing I could see. As I was backing out of the parking spot I heard a little "pop" sound like something dislodged from the suspension. The sound went away until I was about halfway home, and then it came back only when I was on the brakes. I took my room mate for a ride so he could listen while I drove and he said it was coming from the rear. So we pulled the rear wheel and rotor.

The leak is much worse now. The parking brake shoes are contaminated and probably what was causing the noise. Oh BTW the rotor was HOT HOT HOT when I took it off, more so than it should have been for the amount of braking that I did on the way home. So I figure the parking brake shoes were dragging cause it.

I sprayed the heck outta it with brake clean and sanded off the surface of the shoes and this morning the sound was gone on the way to work. But I know I need to change the seal and the ebrake shoes, so I need to know how to get the axle shaft out to replace the seal. Are these C-clip style axles, or pressed in or what?

Thanks!

 

I didn't see the year of your truck but I know on 2000 expedition 4x4 the axle is locked inside the differential with a type of C clip---do a search of the forum---this is a very common problem.

 

yeah, I tried searching, but every time I do I get the "server is under heavy load" error.

 

bump it up

 

so no one has ever done an axle seal on these? I keep trying the search function, but it either times out or says it's too busy.

 

I just did an advanced search for "rear axle seal" in the Nav/exp forum--it returned about 500 hits. Try advanced search--or perhaps you don't have cookies enabled---that's the only thing I can think of. Sorry---I have not actually done one myself---a friend did---it was pinned in the differential--he had a hard time after seal replacement to get the c clip back in---very close tolerances. Requires more technique than muscle

 

Ok, thanks. i've delt with c-clips before and know what a pain in the @#$ they can be, so I'm not looking forward to this. But at least I know what I'm up against now.

Thanks. FWIW, I've tried searching every way I can think of and from a couple different computers and it never seems to work. Advance, regular, logged in, logged out, everything. Oh well.

 

When you pull the axle check the bearing surface on the axle. If there is a groove or pitting replace the axle and bearing.