Thread: Converting Hubs to Oil

I'm curious about this as I'm running the usual SIIA hubs at the moment which are, of course, oil lubed. Well, I grease them first and then the oil gets in there as it's supposed to.

I'll be converting to Stage I stuff and that uses the later 1980-on system which, I think, is only grease lubed.

So what's all this I'm reading about people with later Landies doing a conversion to oil lubed wheelbearings? I can see why, (it's supposed to last much longer), but how exactly?

I gather the idea of grease in the hubs of more recent Land Rovers with a seal to keep the diff oil out is to stop the problem of oil leaks from the hub getting onto the brakes. Probably no problem with just grease in the bearings. Trouble is the contact between the axle and drive hub splines needs lubrication too because of the initially minute amount of backlash in them. This would squeeze grease out and it would not run back in - just be thrown outwards by centrifugal force. Result: Sooner or later they run dry and strip the splines. You just have a horrible crunching noise coming out of them, no drive and the axle and drive hub has to be replaced.

On my '97 build Defender the rear left one went at about 40,000 km. The chewed splines were dry and rusty. Checked the other three hubs. Were okay, still a bit of grease in them. Bought a pair of secondhand drive axles and hubs from a bloke who had installed the better Maxidrive ones along with a diff lock. Was going to properly convert the hubs to oil. Got as far as buying 4 oil seals because the grease seals apparently aren't as good for keeping oil off the brakes but haven't yet installed them. Also got around to drilling and tapping one hub and installing a quarter inch BSP plug so it could be filled up with oil, because I reckoned probably less oil leaks would come from just the hubs instead of pulling out the inner oil seals to let the diff oil in.

The above intended conversions take time. However the quick fix solution I am still using is to about half fill the plastic axle covers with a heavy oil/grease concoction - preferably something with sticky and extreme pressure characteristics and slap them back on. You just need to do this regularly enough so there is always plenty of it in the splines. I haven't done it often enough to force enough oil/ grease through the grease seals to cause any problems.

If you like having clean wheels, need to clean them more regularly due to the bit of seepage around the cheap and nasty push on plastic covers. Maxidrives at least have decent screw on metal ones.
Initially the lubricant I used was a drum of very heavy Castrol industrial hypoid gear oil I used up in other things including leaky slasher gearboxes. Could check the empty 20 litre drum to see what it was if anyone is interested.

I would recommend that everyone who still has the standard setup as mine still are adopt my quick fix procedure. The amount of whatever lubricant used each fill is very small and generally more time is involved in cleaning the oily dirt from around the plastic caps first than half filling and replacing them. I would expect that if plenty of lubricant is kept in them from new, the splines should not wear much more than identical ones on the diff ends of the drive axles.