Club 80-90 Forums

My 4 speed box is dumping it's oil between the box and the near side CV joint.

I've got the joint off and cleaned out the grease. I've took the plastic cap off (read detroyed) and can see a circlip. the haynes says use a puller to remove the plate the CV bolts to.


Can get to the oil seal at that?


If not what do you recomend? Don't fancy gutting the box to get to it

Yes they can. Well, definitely on my 5 speed gear-box as I did it on mine last year. Yes you have to use a puller and it comes off with quite a jerk ( I had mine under tension then tapped gently with a poly hammer)
All parts were available from VW and sensibly priced (below £20) and would you believe it it worked! No more annoying drips. Make sure you get all dirt away from seal before removing it to avoid getting any inside gear-box.
Good-luck.

There's nothing I can find in the Wiki about this job and ...

I need to bite the bullet and get round to doing this job - I've got the pair of seals ready but not the plastic caps - Is it possible to get these off without destroying them? What kind of fitting are they? Pushed in or bonded or what? Anyone know the part number if I need to get some?

Also I assume you need to drain the gearbox oil before doing the work?

All tips gratefully received!

I must have been lucky as I don't remember any difficulty with a plastic cap.
As a recap what I did was;
1) Drain oil, remove wheel and its drive-shaft complete.
2) Clean area around gearbox seal.
3) Remove circlip on the now exposed gearbox flange and using a puller remove flange.
4) Remove the now exposed dirt shield which is attached to side of gearbox. (These are large philip screws so use correct driver or you could 'round' them)
5) Now very carefully drill into the drive-shaft git seal at two opposite places so you can screw in 2 self-tapping screws. ONLY drill into the metal part of seal and do it gently so you don't go through with a jerk and damage seal housing behind.
6) With the 2 screws firmly in place use a slide hammer with appropiate claw to pull the seal out evenly, alternating between the screws.
7) With everything cleaned again fit seal using a socket of almost the same diameter as seal and tap it in with a poly hammer until it bottoms out.
Refit the dirt shield and as a good idea put a bead of sealant between it and the gearbox and anti-seize on the screw threads.
9) Flange on, double check security of circlip and refit drive-shaft. I put anti-seize grease on drive-shaft bolt threads so I know I'll be able to remove again if neccessary but I'll leave that to your discretion!
10) Wheel on, lower and refill with fresh SAE 80 approx 3.5 litres.
11) Short drive and check for leaks at seal AND filler/drain plugs.
12) Hot bath and cold beer.

Only part I needed for one side was V0291 301 189 Seal @ £13.04 + VAT from VW.

Cheers - Brookie

Cheers brookie, now preserved in wiki aspic

https://club8090.co.uk/wiki/Ge ... eak_repair

drill into the drive-shaft git seal

whats a git seal? difficult to remove?

Cheers Brookie - just what we needed!

Bit of a mystery about the plastic seals/ inserts or whatever - sounds like they weren't fitted or were missing from yours. Any one know what they do??

They stop the CV grease getting to the circlip area and dirt from behing the so called 'dirt shield' mine was full of dirt/sand (think it's realy a giant plastic locking nut so stop the guts spinning out.)

the cv seals mentioned are a metal disc with rubber or similar bonded to them, new ones are a nice 'tap in' fit and stop gearbox oil getting into your cv joint grease, refitting old ones is a bit dodgy as theyre unlikely to seal that well again, do it right and replace em!

The plastic caps either fall off or are a pig to remove.

Refit an old flange seal, hah, getting it off in one piece must be a masterly trick indeed without the screws and slide hammer thing above.

Well I just did the job - one side anyway (the worst one) - took me 4 hours, mainly due to not having some of the right tools and having to botch something to get by.

But I think it's good to go and not leak - but time will tell. The disc seal kind of fell out (as mentioned above!) - it had some sealant attached so had been off before but was in very nice condition so during reassembly I stuck it back in with some instant gasket.

One thing I noticed was that the grease in the CV had turned into something more like gear oil and kept dripping out the whole time I was doing the rest of the job - certainly not like it was when I stuffed the moly grease in a year or two back (I only do 5 to 6k miles a year typically)
Any ideas why so thin? I thought it dried up and got thicker by some accounts....

It often does dry up, but that may be constant overheating due to a worn CV joint or extreme age and oxidisation. The fact you re-fill at sensible intervals might have something to do with it, and as with many greased joints, there should always be some sort of air gap for expansion e.g. don't fillup wheel bearing caps, flush the grease off level and replace cap, so it can expand into it (other advice may conflict but that was common practice years ago, due to oil company research).

Other than VW's sachets of MOS2, the generic stuff by the tinfull comes in various viscosities, Medium being what most factors stock for CVJs. I've never seen it actually dripping out, but always zipper a carrier bag around end of shaft as soon as it's dropped down, else I'd always get some on me one way or the other!

== ==
Drive-flange - pulling off. Had a chat with Aidan t'other about this, due to enquiry on new gearbox. When new he says these can be on very tight, but some older vehicles they can be quite loose on splines - so expect either and you'll be well prepared

Just resonding to Hacksaw Bobs query about 'what's a git seal'?'.
As far as I know this is the name given to this type of seal. IE a seal for a rotating shaft with 1 or 2 lips that do the actual dynamic sealing. Why they called it that heaven knows - perhaps it's because they're a git to remove! (it can be any way)
You would NEVER use the same one again because ;
1) you destroy it when removing because they're either levered out (not recommended as can cause damage) or pulled out using the self-tapping screws technique.
2) the sealing lips are very delicate and would probably be damaged during removal.
The whole seal is an interference fit in the housing and itself is a static seal so if any damage to seal's outer diameter or housing internal diameter it could leak. To be sure you don't get leaks at this point I would use a thin coating of Hylomar on the seal's outer diameter.
Brookie -

'lip' seal corrupted to 'git seal I expect

Good description though above... they are usually pretty tight intf. fit in housings.

I tried the self tap screw method but was not all that successful - probably due to not having a slide hammer. I clamped a mole to each screw in turn and tried to lever the seal out a bit at a time. The screw pulled out of the metal in the seal several times at which point the "much swearing and scratching of head tool" was deployed. Then another hole and another self tapper and a bit of destructive mole gripping and levering - at which point it gave up the struggle and came out - with much cheering. Then I cleaned up the couple of small burrs on the edge of the housing and started to drift the new one in with a tough plastic cap cos I don't have a socket that big, finishing it with a nice rounded socket moving round edge progressively.