Deciphering Final Drive Leak?

[Bpreynolds2]

[Because this is becoming more and more about my drive leak I went ahead and just changed the thread name].

Hey all, I recently picked up a very nice one owner ‘03 Stone in my favorite color scheme from that era.  This is actually the 5th 1100 Cali I’ve owned over these many years, this following the one I mostly rebuilt several years ago (and then later like an idiot, sold it).  I’m loving it but after about 100 miles I discovered oil splattered on the rear tire courtesy of the leaky drive.  I assume it is either the outer or inner seal and I’ve read the threads on here about how best to determine which.  My question is this, however, should I just go ahead and do all the hard(er) work of disassembling and servicing the whole drive or just concentrate first on the easiest fix of the big seal you can pop out and in just by removing the wheel?  I guess it’s the old if ain’t broke sort of thing but then again, both of those seals are now 21 years old.  The bike has 12k miles on it.  How hard is the inner seal to replace?  Even all the work I did on my rebuild which included work on the cush drive and so forth, I did not open the drive on it nor have I ever with any of the Guzzis I’ve owned so I’m just not sure how much work I’m looking at to do that?  Opinions welcome. 





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[guzzisteve]

Is your axle wet w/oil? If not let it go. The seal in my V700 is 57yrs old & not leaking.
To get to it you have to take out the bearing race on the inside off the case to get seal in.

[Dave Swanson]

I would first do a fluid change to make sure the prior owner hadn't over filled it.

[Bpreynolds2]

Steve and Dave, very good points and much thanks.  I really should have checked for overfill before I drained the drive this weekend.  I have not pulled the wheel yet so I hope to do that this week and then check the axle.  It has been crazy hot around here lately and I’ve been riding in it so I’m sure the heat combined with possibly old oil and/or overfill could really have been putting a strain on the seal to contain it. 

[John A]

The outside seal is fairly easy if you’re familiar and can be done with the bevel box in place if you’re competent. The inner seal can open a can of worms and get complicated if the shims on the cover are damaged upon disassembly which happens if they are fragile and stuck. ( usual) . You can usually tell which one it is after you remove the wheel or pull the axel and see if there is oil in the area past the inner seal near the nut end on the axel like Steve says. Removing the wheel is a good idea anyway to grease the drive line splines and wheel coupling.I degrease the splines and coat them with molybdenum disulfide dry lubricant spray and use Wurth sticky grease on top of that. It may be overkill but parts are expensive and it lasts. When you reinstall the bevel box , tighten the axel before tightening the four nuts to the swingarm. Nice bike!

[John Croucher]

The big seal is easy to get out with gear box installed.  But putting the new one in has to be doe correctly. It has to be put in evenly and the correct depth.  Not deep enough and it will leak.  Too deep and it will rub on the inner race of the crown gear big bearing and then possibly spin and leak along with get hot and break down the robber coating contaminating the oil. 

Also the seal needs to be 7 mm thick double lip. 

I have recently did a complete disassembly.  Including the small seal, roller bearing and race.  Heating the housing helps to get the roller bearing race out.  The axle spacer is press fit in and will come out.  But, I could not find a tool to fit in the housing to pull the race out or the inner race off the crown gear.  I made tools, applied lots of heat. 

Come and see me and we can do the job in my shop.

Then you need to get a new bevel gear nut so we can shim the two gears properly.   

[Bpreynolds2]

Library Work has been wacky lately and I’m barely getting time at all to work on the bike but tonight around 8:30 I did manage to run out to the garage, pull the wheel and drive and I’m a little confused, trying to decipher what I’m seeing.  I expected to see oil streaks coming down on the inside of the drive as I’ve seen on many other posts here; yet, as you can see there is relatively little evidence on the inside of the drive (outside of the main seal, I mean), where oil has clearly leaked.  Instead, look at the pic of the wheel itself and you see all kinds of stuff there and it looks "somewhat" like the really old molly tainted oil that came out of the drive when I drained it but greasy.  Also included pictures of where you see the oil splattering on the wheel.  Maybe what I’m looking at here is the exact example of an inner seal leak where it’s not coming out of the big main seal but rather through the inner seal and then draining down and around the parts seen on the wheel?  Or maybe I just have no idea what I’m talking about 

[John A]

It looks like when it got up to operating temp it started slinging grease, is it oily down in the axel recess?. It’s hopefully not leaking at all. I’d clean it up and regrease it with Wurth or similar sticky grease and run it . https://www.mgcycle.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1914 Sometimes you get lucky!

[Tom H]

From your pics. I would say that a standard grease was used to lube the splines and was applied to the wheel splines instead of the drive splines. Surprised that it's not on the drive as well.

Tom

[Bpreynolds2]

Much thanks, guys.  When I first found splatter on the wheel and such, I did notice that it felt a lot more like grease than oil spots but I just assumed that was what the molly additive drive oil did outside the drive (dried and become kind of greasy).  There is truly nowhere on the drive itself where I can see that oil is/was escaping.  Like I said prior, it did only start to do this on a couple of very extremely hot days.  Oh well.  I’ll pop it back on, put in new oil, and see what happens.  Sad, however, that trying to remove the wheel with just the center stand on level ground, I managed to damage the plastic fender  but that’s my typical day in the garage if I don’t fudge something.  Center stand just not seemingly tall enough to let the wheel out of the well without tipping the bike to the right or raising it higher.  Instead of just pulling the drive first, I tried to wedge the wheel out at standard center stand height, and damaged the plastic fender  .  A minute after doing that I was like, uh, probably just easier to remove the drive and slide the wheel out - literally took 5 minutes.  .  But that’s me in the garage.  I’ll eventually figure things out but at about a 5 times slower pace than most folks 

[Bill E.]

Maybe someone went in and heavily greased up the cush drive?

[guzzisteve]

It all looks normal, and if axle wasn't wet w/90W you are good. Like others have said maybe extra grease on rubber pucks. On the farm I used a moly grease, black and would not melt if you torch it.

[John Croucher]

Looks like the cush drive was greased or lubed and now leaking out.

Take the cush drive apart and clean. If you re lube the rubber, just wipe with enough grease make them shiny.

The seal does not appear to be leaking.

I have replaced the big seal 4 times on my Quota.  It still leaks. The seal surface was corroded and has a scratched/ding were the seal lip touches.  Allowing a small amount of oil to leak. I am going to try putting some solder and polish it back smooth.  That does not work  new crown gear. 

The gear box Leaked 1 ounce in 500 miles. Enough to cause a continuous mess on the rim and tire. 

[Moparnut72]

John, I would try Marine Tex Epoxy. I know of a couple of guys who have used it to fix scores in outboard cylinders and to reshape the ports on two stroke outboards with good results. Tough stuff.
kk

[Bpreynolds2]

Much thanks for all the fantastic advice, John both on this thread and via email.  Always appreciated.

For everyone another quick question.  I guess this is more of a subjective one but since I have the wheel off should I go ahead and do the cush drive mod I did to my former rebuild?  I think I removed 2 or 3 of the rubber pieces and maybe even drilled some holes in the remaining ones per advice I found on here and in other places.  But honestly, while I could tell a slight difference I’m not sure how “much” of a difference it was making overall and not sure it was worth the time/effort? 

[John Croucher]

Much thanks for all the fantastic advice, John both on this thread and via email.  Always appreciated.

For everyone another quick question.  I guess this is more of a subjective one but since I have the wheel off should I go ahead and do the cush drive mod I did to my former rebuild?  I think I removed 2 or 3 of the rubber pieces and maybe even drilled some holes in the remaining ones per advice I found on here and in other places.  But honestly, while I could tell a slight difference I’m not sure how “much” of a difference it was making overall and not sure it was worth the time/effort?

Take it apart, clean, lightly grease rubber and put back together.  Check wheel bearings, spokes, clean every thing good while you can reach. Inspect brake m.c. and pads. Inspect swing arm fit on pivot pins.

Come to the Kentucky Rally in September.

[bmc5733946]

If you have the drive unit removed from the swing arm, I would at the very least remove the pinion carrier and inspect the bevel gears. Grab the pinion shaft in a vise and knock the ring gear housing off the pinion carrier. This series, 01-06, of bikes had problems with pinion gears once in a while. I've seen 5-6 where the pinions were destroyed. It has been attributed by some, me included, to the use of moly in the gear oil causing the small crown wheel bearing to fail. Supposedly the moly builds up on the small diameter roller bearing and causes them to shatter under load passing the debris throughout the drive box. Simple to check. ymmv

Brian

[John Croucher]

If you have the drive unit removed from the swing arm, I would at the very least remove the pinion carrier and inspect the bevel gears. Grab the pinion shaft in a vise and knock the ring gear housing off the pinion carrier. This series, 01-06, of bikes had problems with pinion gears once in a while. I've seen 5-6 where the pinions were destroyed. It has been attributed by some, me included, to the use of moly in the gear oil causing the small crown wheel bearing to fail. Supposedly the moly builds up on the small diameter roller bearing and causes them to shatter under load passing the debris throughout the drive box. Simple to check. ymmv

Brian

This happened to my Quota.  I did not know was the cause.  The cage broke apart and jammed the rollers.  Locking up the rear wheel at about 5 mph.  Lucky me.  Right at the entrance to My driveway in the middle of a busy street.  Fortunately, two young guys stopped, I walked to the garage, grabbed the roll around jack, put under the bike and We pushed it down hill to the garage 200 feet away.  Thinking the worse on why the wheel locked up. Two new taper bearings, large roller bearing and needle bearing to make sure the gear box was all new.  Now to get the leak to stop on the big seal.  Going to try the epoxy fix on the sealing surface. 

[John A]

I would hesitate to yard it apart right now . It doesn’t look like it has a lot of miles on it. It would be better to clean it up and put it back together and run it while you collect everything and prepare for more maintenance at your leisure if it needs it. Read over it https://www.thisoldtractor.com/guzzitech.dk/gb_en_complex-technical_bevel-box.htm
There are more articles on it by Pete as well. The pinion comes right out and you can spin it by hand to check for roughness in the pinion bearings and look at the gears for defects . Stick your finger in the wheel bearings and feel for any roughness as you put pressure and turn them. I like to have a pair of wheel bearings on hand when I do a tire change and I replace them for any defect. I clean the Cush drive rubbers and spray them with heavy duty silicone periodically. The most common problems are wheel bearings, rear brake pads and rusty drive splines.i degrease the splines and coat them with dry film molybdenum and put Wurth over that and it usually lasts for two tire changes.