Community Forums

2-Nickels · 07-19-2019, 06:39 AM

I’m having what I would explain is an odd thing happen. Over the past year I have twice had to replace the gasket on the passenger side drive axle hub. Now on the road again it has gone. I had it changed last fall at a drive line shop and in the spring at Premier. Today a drive line shop will change it again.

Has anyone had these problems? If you have have you been able to resolve them? What might you have done differently?

The coach is on a 2009 chassis with I believe a Dana drive axle.

mike brez · 07-19-2019, 07:03 AM

Sounds like it might be the axle. I changed my drivers side one a couple years ago along with the shoes after they got soaked. So far so good.

Jean n Steve · 07-19-2019, 07:18 AM

A year ago the previous owner had the same passenger side inner hub seal replaced on ours. And the shoes.
Hmm.

vito.a · 07-19-2019, 04:56 PM

I had to replace the passenger side axle gasket on our coach last year. It was leaking rear axle gear lube onto the wheel.

I jacked up the passenger side to lessen the amount of lost gear oil. I then removed the lug nuts and hub cover with a 1" impact. The axle has several retaining bolts holding it in that come out pretty easily. Then you slide the axle out.

The key is to thoroughly clean the back of the axle flange and the surface of the hub. It is time consuming to hand scrape the stuck on paper gasket remnants.

I used some Permatex Ultra gray RTV on both sides to help retain the new paper gasket as sections of the old one had blown out.

So far it is holding well.

I spoke to a professional repair shop that does this on large trucks and they do not use RTV because it makes it harder to pull the axle if it happens again. I hope to not have to do this again.

It's important to check the axle gear oil level afterward. I ended up changing the gear oil in ours.

vito.a · 07-19-2019, 06:36 PM

Here's a picture of the rear hub with the drive axle removed and a picture of the axle. The picture reminded me you only have to remove every other lug nut to remove the cover.

The last picture shows the Permatex Ultra gray RTV applied to the face of the hub. It's very important to clean all the grease and old gasket off.

2-Nickels · 07-20-2019, 07:19 AM

Thank you all for sharing your experiences. It appears the most important thing to do well is clean the surfaces properly ahead of installing a new gasket.

I had the repairs done yesterday and fellow doing the work tells me he spent a fair bit of time cleaning up the surfaces ahead of reassembly. He also put new nylon nuts on all the bolts as we wondered if the lock washers had lost their spring. This repair is completed and we'll see how it holds up. He also top up the fluid.

On another note the fellow doing the repair discovered my drive axle shock on the drivers side had broke. The actual casting had torn apart at the top. These were RoadKing shocks and I was led to believe they were indestructible. Now I know this is not true! Anyhow, i have taken the shock and ship it back to RoadKing to be rebuilt. I am parked for 3 weeks by the lake. Drove the last 20 miles with no shock and I will return to the shop 3 weeks from now to have the repaired shock reinstalled.