RallyRoach

Soooo, my bro and I did a morning to midnite thrashfest on my 84 RoachRunner project. The first thing we did was button up the rear axle, and found a bad wheel bearing. We whacked it off the axle shaft and put it aside so I can find a new one Monday. Got the axle installed with a spare stub shaft, but the backing plate is the wrong side, so its not a permanent solution.
Next we removrd the transfer case to install the TrailGear doubler. It went real smooth once we figured out the differences between the instructions (for top shift case) and my forward shift case. When we were done, we looked at the pile of parts that we removed in making the crawl box and saw the bearing on the input shaft. Looks similar to the wheel bearing, but without the rubber seals, I wonder... Yup same part number and everything.
The question is: Can I run this bearing without the rubber seals as a wheel bearing? I figure there's seals on both sides of it already, so the rubber shields must just be a back-up. Am I crazy or have I found a previously unknown source of wheel bearings?

RallyRoach

MudHippy

That's a negative. NO GO! The rubber is an absolute necessity. It's job is to seal out gear oil if the axle oil seal fails. It also holds the grease in. If oil dilutes that grease, the bearing will over-heat and disintegrate promptly.