Splooge on the rear wheel, Good seals gone bad! Options

[SkooterG]

As many of you have, I have periodically experienced the nasty splooge on the rear wheel of my FJR.



Just over a month ago, at the end of the Cal24 rally, I see the following:









Nasty, ain't it?

I have had this occur semi-frequently, but never this bad. I wasn't too worried about it until beeroux comes over, takes a look, and says, "You're not riding (the 700 miles or so) home with it like that are you? That's about to give out!" Well, now I am properly freaked so I went to a local auto parts store, bought a $$$ 17mm wrench and some Mobil1 75W-90 gear oil, and proceeded to open the top final drive port (the fill hole). Well, a little bit of oil comes OUT! Yep. Sucker is full, so obviously in regards to the photos above, a little bit of leaked oil goes a long way in making a mess.

Well, a while back I thought I had the root cause licked, as I described in my Driveshaft/Gear Coupling/Final Drive 101 topic. You see, I thougt it was the seal that is attached to the end of the driveshaft and that slides into the gear coupling that was letting final drive oil through.

Not the case. I need to update the above topic, as it's another seal that is causing the problem. It's the seal that's part of the gear coupling itself - #12 in the diagram below, NOT #34 as I had first thought.






I bought that seal from UMotors a while back when I realized it was the problem and have been carrying it with me when travelling, but have not replaced it as it is still a sporadic problem. Sometimes I get splooge, sometimes not. And when I do, it's still not a lot of oil that is leaking in the great scheme of things.

So in my case, the final drive oil is sometimes leaking past that seal, and working it's way to the swingarm weephole where it then makes the fine mess you see above. Just for your FYI, there are two other seals that can leak (#5, #24 and O-ring #20 in the above diagram), causing problems. Radman did an excellent write-up when he repaired the faulty O-ring his FJR's final drive: Clicky HERE!

So, anybody have any ideas why that seal only leaks sporadically? Should I replace it pronto? Am I in danger? Will cats and dogs be living together?

I mean, it's been doing that for about 70,000 miles so besides the occasional mess, no big deal, right?


Edit: The bad seal (#12) was replaced at 110,000 miles just before the Iron Butt Rally. Now, at 127,000 miles, I have yet to see one single drop of splooge (leaked final drive oil) since the repair. All is right in my final drive's world once again. Oh, and the repair, done by a dealer, was covered completely under the 4 year Y.E.S. extended warranty.

This post has been edited by SkooterG: Oct 2 2007, 10:39 PM

Reason for edit: Update after repair.