DRIVE PINION OIL SEAL, EATON H052 (Part 5 of 6)
*6. Press seal into retainer until it bottoms against shoulder.
I oriented the new seal with the thin lip forward as was the old seal. With my plywood tool diameter as such, I had full engagement of the seal ring and when pressed, it couldn’t go all the way to the bottom. I thought this was a good idea to prevent me from going too far and damaging the seal. When pressed in as far as the plywood tool allowed, I placed the old seal between the plywood tool and the new seal, being careful to align everything in a kopasetic manner. Then for the last push to bottom, I pressed slowly, making several visual checks along the way so as not to damage anything.
Buying the press I mentioned in Post #11 above was a good investment. I used to try doing this sort of job using a bench vise. With the press, I had much better control. The seal wasn't cheap so it got treated with respect.
*7. Carefully position seal retainer over pinion to prevent damage to seal, and torque retaining bolts to specifications.
Ya, be careful not to whack your new seal on the splined shaft, dude. The bolt torque chart calls the seal retainer a "pinion bearing cage" which confused me a little. Now I had a chance to use my new torque wrench, a CDI 30-250 ftlb, for the first time ! My old torque wrench was an el cheapo Craftsman and the plastic handle fell off recently after only 20 years of service. I torqued the five ½-13 bolts with new Grade 8 lockwashers to 95 ftlb.
The Service Manual doesn’t mention cleaning the yoke, the carrier surfaces or using a gasket, but these are necessary, too. The yoke cleaned up nicely and the sealing surface was nice and smooth, what luck! I made an O-shaped insert from flexible plastic to keep crud from getting into the carrier guts while I cleaned the gasket surface and bolt holes. I cleaned and chased all the bolt hole threads. They were full of junk and took several passes of the tap to get out all the debris.
I didn't find a precut gasket readily available so I used Permatex Ultra Black RTV on the advice of BCOWANWHEELS (#6 in this thread à
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...l+gasket+eaton). The pic below was taken at the finger-tight, ooze-out, beginning-to-cure stage of the RTV.