Rear wheel seal leak

[Terry J. Sturgis]

My son works for Michigan Kenworth. He was checking my motor home and noticed a small leak on the inner right rear wheel seal. His boss said it was OK to replace it at the dealership on his time with their tools. (big jacks, 1" air tools , etc.) It's supposed to be a 1/2 hour job. Turned out to be seven hours which included parts chasing.
It is a Rockwell axel. Took the wheels off, pulled the axel and found the problem. There is a keeper on the bearing that has ears on it that have to be bent over to retain the bearing nut and the ears were broke and the tab that keeps the keeper centered on the axel broke too. Long story short, my wheels would have come off if my son had not paid attention to a small leak.
Total cost, $164.75 and a trip to Taco Bell at midnight. I'm a lucky man.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

A stroke of good luck. I helped another POG member with a hub seal leak and found the washer with the ears was not even there. The only thing that kep their hub from separating from the coach was the outer nut was on tight.

It is examples like that which encourage me to urge owners to remain with their coaches while they are being serviced and to observe the work. Your ears may have broken off due to a mechanic using the retainer way too many times to try to save a dollar or two.

[Jerry Winchester]

While the seal failure rarely leads to a bad situation if you catch it soon enough, I posted my experience with the leaking seal where the bearings were pitting on one side of the roller. Turns out the retainer nut was not square when it was machined and was the cause of both the seal and bearing failure. I had never seen that happen and it certainly came from Rockwell like that, so paying attention to even a trivial job like changing out a wheel seal is worth the effort.

You can't just walk away and not ask, "I wonder why that failed?" especially when it fails prematurely.