mx5cartalk.com

Hi guys, really need some help from the diff gurus .

My car is an nb8a with a 3.9 torsen LSD from a wrecked jap rs.

So I decided to replace my diff fluid on Saturday and noticed 1 drive shaft seal and my pinion seal have been leaking. So I decide to remove the seals and get new ones. Drive shaft seal goes in and eventually the shaft as well ( didn't know about the clip thing on the end) no worries :-)

Then I look at the pinion seal, they look different, check the measurements, new one is 16mm thick old one is 10mm. There is only 10mm inside the diff to house it. Mmmm , order a genuine Mazda one today to be on the safe side and the parts man says there's a crush thingy on my pinion shaft to set loadings on the diff etc and I should seriously consider taking it to an expert or risk killing my diff

What are the chances of killing my diff if I put a new seal in, torque to spec and forget about the crush thingy etc?????

Thanks in advance,

Ben :-)

The collapsable spacer will only be a problem if you put more torque on the pinion nut, it will collapse a little more and change the backlash of your gear set a little. Ultimately you can only collapse them as far as the bearings will allow, pull the tapered rollers together until they cant go any further, you will end up preloading the bearings so much you wont be able to turn the pinion shaft and then kill your bearings prematurely. As long as you set it correctly and keep the backlash reasonable it should be fine depending on how the bad the bearings are already.


what Pinion seal did you get the first time?

Hi.
To maintain the approximate load on the spacer when removing the nut count the number of turns to remove the nut and use the same number when replacing. If you have removed the nut take it to a diff specialist to set it up correctly or as stated previously you risk doing serious damage.

put the diff back together, but other things have come up so the car isnt on the road yet. will update once its back on the road.

the incorrect seal was obtained from bursons.

To help others out in the future, the seals in the sides of the diff are the same for the 1.8 na and nb, cannot speak for the 1.6 boys.

The Pinion seal i endend up getting genuine, however your new one should measure 64mm O.D, 40mm I.D and 10mm thick metal. There will be a rubber skirt as well dont count this when measuring thinckness