3month old "brake" squeal and now a axle seal leak.. unrelated, i think not
 

ok... so I know this has been covered tons of times in several posts
"rear axle noise" "rear axle leak" "axel is leaking"
anyway, all the posts so far seem to deal with only the seal...

well, here's my concern, I've had what I thought to be a squeaky rear drum/brakes for the last 3 months... cleaning with cans of brake cleaner and completely disassembling never got me anywhere in getting rid of the noise. Its always been what seemed to be a slight squeak at coasting thru parking lots to about 25 mph... and disappeared as soon as I applied any type of action to the brakes. Up until now there has never been a leak of any type either though, until now. Now there is what is definately a small collection of what is definatly gear oil inside my rim.

What I want to find out is this, most posts have said that it is hard to check or tell if the bearing is bad, is it possible that mines been making noise since the gear oil has washed away the grease for 3 months and just now decided to leak? Or does anyone think it is still unrelated and i just need to look at my rear brakes some more after the seal is fixed.

especially if anyone has replaced this bearing before, please chime in on what it entails since the more and more I think about this, the more and more I cant help but think this is not just the seal

thanks in advance

so... bearing looks to be about $50-80 depending on brands at www.NAPAonline.com and the inner seal looks to be around $6-7... the toyota FSM also lists a gasket to be a non-reusable part, anyone else actually replace that when they did the seals?

i had differential oil gettin into my left rear drum and leaking out of the wheel a while back. i pulled the axle and replaced a little oil seal and it seems to have stopped the problem. I dunno if that helps any. I will be back to see if your bearings could be bad from the oil. because if yours are bad then i imagine mine are as well
best of luck

yeah i dont think that mine are neccessarily bad from oil, I think they may just be bad, but maybe the inner seal went 3 months ago and never leaked until now... i read in another post that when the inner seal lets the oil out of the diff, it can wash the grease outta the bearing, but the bearings i saw as replacements all claim to be sealed units

hmm.. so update, I still cant really find any solid info on replacing the bearing... plus i dont seem to have any place to do this except my apartment parking lot.... arghh, this is going against everything I stand for, but it looks like i will be taking up the shop on their $128 labor charge and $65 for parts monday unless anything come up :pop:

This may sound stupid... But i kinda had the same thing with my old VW. One of the springs came lose, and the brakes would not come off the drum and squeek untill the braked got pushed to tense up the spring on the top ( if i remember correctly the top spring... ) enough to pull the whole shoe away from the drum. Check your springs and fittings, it might even be a old spring stretched to much from a old brake change, or the shoes sticking with some old oil gunk stuck somewhere. A 10$ spring kit may fix the problem before you get into some serous $.

lol.... i wish it was the brakes... but no, its gear oil, and its fresh... I've completely ripped apart the brakes twice in the last 3-4 months to try and figure out the noise, once replacing the hardware, and it always made noise the second i put it back together

update?

Been through this, axle vent plugged blew out inner seal, replaced several times but axle still leaked, took axle out brought to a so called yota expert he said bearing was fine...after several inner seals I took the axle to someone new( my brother lol guess I shoulda started there), he said bearing was so bad it was un safe to drive. That weekend put new oem bearing in. Hasnt leaked since.

Now this imo is nothing that can be done at home with out serious tools. But to save on labour I would remove the axle then take it to some one with the right presses and have them do it. Might save an hour or 2 in labour costs. First one I have done it wasnt a picnic but only took a couple of hours, and bearing wasnt that costly so you might squeak out cheaper than a quote on the whole job start to finish.....hope this helps and you havent paid for the whole job to be done at the stealership yet( I was so frustrated I almost went that route).

as of now its at the "NAPA" repair facility in town, nearest yota dealer is 30 miles away, too far to bike back, they quoted 120 for labor, but I will argue it if they go any higher, or go higher on dealer parts, since i dropped if off sunday night, and they are still waiting on parts = BS... Hopefully it will be all good when done, and wont be a tweaked axle... hopefully just the bearing

I'll make sure to update y'all when its outta the shop

I will have to check the breather as soon as its back, but i think the bearing went before the seal, so im guessing it was just abuse. Unfortunately, i think the root cause was hitting some really good bumps this one weekend on a trail, thats when the squeak started i think, so thats why i hope the axle is ok

Ditto. It cost me about $300 when I had mine done a year ago:
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/show...ight=axle+seal

UPDATE: shop said they didnt have the tools to do the bearing, and insists that its the u-joint that makes that kind of squeak, so they just ended up replacing the seal and a retainer of some sort, cost me parts only, so 31.59 for a new seal... maybe it is just the driveshaft? but the squeak went away when it started leaking so i assumed it was leaked grease re-lubing the bearing... if it comes back I'll try shooting the driveline again. If it leaks again, time to start over

Let us know how it goes... Ive read a bad bearing can make the axle wobble some, and the seals will leak new or not. I agree, save a lot of $ to take the axle in yourself, but 120 is a bit steep. The dealer near my place ( not the first scam dealer, the next ) charged me like 45$ labor to do it, plus the bearing ~110, seal ~18, and 2 spacers, one for bearing ~15 and one for abs ~14 if i recall best. Tax and out the door was like 240 ish, vs the 600 labor fee and 600 part cost the first dealer quoted me for a whopping sum of 1267!

120 was for them to take it all apart and put it all back together, cheap if you ask me

wont know for a week or two, it all the issues have gone away, I relubed the entire drivetrain again, so I'll have to see what happens

Is it me or is there a trend, drivers side rear failures? I have searched this in the past to help with my issues now fixed and checked other forums....seems overwhelmingly drivers side rear.....

oh, dont worry :) mine was passenger side

I read somewhere that someone at toyota pressed the rear seal button, funds must be low there :-) I suppose something has to break sooner or later.