Blew an axle seal a few months ago, so La Trekka has been sitting sadly in the garage. I'm tight on money for the next few months, so my plan is to buy a knuckle rebuild kit without the axle bearings, then take it apart and hope my bearings are OK. Worst comes to worst, the bearings wait for a few more paychecks. Need to get this done, as riding my DRZ into work sucks and I'm sick of borrowing my mom's Beetle!

Questions:

My garage is narrow, so it would be much easier to do one side, then turn her around and do the other side. I'm not even sure that if I centered it in the garage, if the birfs would even be able to come out all the way. Will it be OK to do one side at a time like this?

Gear oil is expensive and the oil in my axle is pretty new; do I need to drain the oil to rebuild the knuckles?

Any advice besides reading the multiple tutorials on the internet?

Thanks!

 

Also, does anyone know the length of a birfield, so I can measure to see if I have enough clearance to take them out? Thanks!

 

yes, drain the differential, if one of your inner seals is toast it will dump all over you

this sticky thread should help you out
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f114...ctures-223729/

 

They stick into your differential a few inches, so you should be able to measure fairly close before taking it apart.

 

I guess you might be able to jack up one side at a time, and it shouldn't pour out when you remove the axle shaft. But even if you drain it, just clean your drain plug area and drain it into a clean pan. You can re-use it if you want. Unless it's Amsoil or something expensive like that I don't know if I would bother.

 

Isn't the Birfield just the big swivel ball joint with the 6 balls/rollers between the inner and outer axle shafts?
The gear oil is most likely junk now if the seal is shot. My moly grease was mixing with the oil before its rebuild.

 

Yeah, but he meant the inner axle shaft part of it. I forgot about the oil mixing with the grease, you're right.

 

Fine to do one side at a time. Fine to reuse gear oil provided it hasn't mixed with knuckle grease (which seal did you say blew?) and doesn't have metal shavings in it from a bad bearing (use a clean drain pan, fish around with a magnet, and see what you catch!).

 

There is no way that I would rebuild my knuckles without replacing the bearings - even if I knew the bearings were good. With the amount of work you have to do to replace everything else, You would be kicking yourself later when you have to go back and replace the bearings.