Anyone hear fo this questions

[300guy]

This is a follow up on my 300 outer axle seal leak. When we jacked up the tractor, the tractor axle moved about 1/4 inch. Removed the outer cap to find the bearing severely damaged. The interesting thing is that when we took the inner race out, the outer race fell out or part of it did. The outer race was broke in half down the middle of the ball path!! One of the balls was even broke right in half. Luckily the axle shaft was not damaged. Only other concern was I was told by a guy who does lots of work on these tractors that the outer seal needed to be replaced with 2 seals. Two seals would not fit in the cap. The other guy helping me did drive out 2 metal pieces, one was the seal, the other a hallow metal cap. Does anyone know if the felt wick seal was originally held in place by a metal cap? Anyway two seals would not go into the cap and the metal cup we had was damaged and would not go back into the area where the felt wick seal was. So we put the felt wick in place and drove the IH seal into place and put the cap on.

 

[Janicholson]

Some new seals are actually much thinner than the original IH seal. Putting 2 of them in with grease between them is normal. if your new seal was the same as the old, only one will fit. Jim

 

[Farmboy 81]

This is a different repair but I rebuilt the pto assembly on a Farmall 100. The original seal was the felt washer backed up by a metal ring. I couldn't locate a new original style setup like this so went with 2 regular lip type seals to fill the space. Has not leaked in last 10 yrs since.

 

[used red MN]

I cant tell you the exact configuration of what held the felt seal in, I can say this. The purpose was to keep major dirt or contaminates away from the leather seals. The leather lips were way more susceptible to microscopic dirt particles embedding in them and causing accelerated wear due to the stiffness and poress surfaces of the leather. New style neoprene seals are far less susceptible to this. And secondly it will be very unlikely you will use the tractor as much or in the severe conditions it would have been the first 10 years of its life. Kind of a second tip or trick, not sure how far you have this tractor taken apart but if you have the deck off you might consider this. How do the teeth look on the bull gears? Any appreciable wear or teeth flaking? An old trick on these types of final drive systems is to swap the bull gears and brake pinions from side to side. Then in forward gears you are driving off the side of the teeth that was only previously used when the tractor was in reverse. I only mention this because the tractor must have had a fair bit of use to wear out a bearing as far as you described.

 

[D Slater]

No seal used for that application has room for two. Later IH sold a double lip seal as replacements and felt wasn't used with those seals. Not aware of other metal in axle cap. Maybe a repair sleeve that was on axle for the oil seal to contact.

 

[300guy]

That has to be it because the new seal was the same thickness as the old one. The metal cap that we took out had to be to hold the felt in. There was a ridge inside the axle end cap where the felt went and the metal cap we took out was almost that size. It was way smaller that the seal diameter. So we put the felt in, the seal and put it back together. Then greased the zerk to lube the felt good. The one ball that was broke in half must have wedged some how and maybe that cause the outer race to break. Never seen a big race like that broke the way it was!!!

It has been since 1969 to 74 when the last time I worked with anything like this on an H, and since that time I my brain cells must have been written over as I do not remember much about the exact parts in there. All my work the past 50 years has been mainly with cars and small engines.

I don't know what happen but my heading sure was a jumbled mess!!!

 

[pete 23]

I would guess the outer medal ring was just the outer shell of original seal. If you get a new seal and it fits in the cap ok then you will know that is what it was.
On the other hand, if new seal just flops around in the cap, well, you have a problem. Not likely though. And like Slater said. New seal has double lip. Outer lip is to keep dirt out which was the job of felt on original style.

Using a felt with double lip seal will pinch that outer lip and make it of no use.