[07Silver]

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Goldwinger1984 wrote:

They are made of a special tough steel alloy that alows them to be flexible without breaking and they have a hard machine chrome finish that is ground to final size. The chrome finishprotects the steel underneath and makes for a hard surface for the rubber seal to ride on. Suprisingly, rubber will wear steel down unless it's one of the harder steel alloys.

Vic

That's a fact. My wife had a Fiat Seicento car and at 48000 miles it developed an oil leak at the crankshaft pulley. The dealer had to replace the seal AND the pulley. There was a neat groove worn into the pulley all the way round where the lip of the seal had worn it out. The dealer said this was fairly common.

 

[Jason]

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This used to happen with Ford Orions, except that the seal wore on the crankshaft and made a groove. All out of warranty usually and at around 100k miles. The cure was to bond a thin sleeve over the crankshaft to provide a new surface for the seal. This just reinforces what Vic said about rubber wearing into steel. The chrome surface on forks I'd expect to hold out longer as it's usually very hard, but you can never tell for sure.

 

[exavid]

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Rubber itself doesn't wear into steel, it's the bits and particles in it that come from manufacturing or just grit the rubber picks up that does the trick. Same reason you don't use any old paper to clean lens with, the stuff picks up tiny hard particles and end up embedded that can scratch. Think of rubber as a nice matrix to hold grinding compound.

 

[Goldwinger1984]

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exavid, when you get a chance, compare the friction factor of rubber to mild steel, you might be suprised at what you realize.


Vic

 

[Jason]

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Another example of seals wearing out steel is the Skoda Fabia 1.2 car that is being made now. The seal that the front crankshaft pulley sits into wears a groove in the pulley. I fitted a new seal to my brothers Fabia yesterday and I had to push it a bit further into its location so it would miss the groove on the pulley that the old seal had worn. A quick phone call to the service department confirmed that this is common on 2000-2002 models. From 2003 the pulley is made of harder steel so doesn't wear out.

 

[exavid]

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The problem is not all tha uncommon, I've had to make up a wire ring to fit between a shaft seal and the recess it pressed into just to make sure the seal didn't sit on the worn spot. It left the seal sitting a little bit proud but it worked alright since the width of the steel housing of the seal was about 3/8" wide and the wire a little less than 1/16".

 

[englishted]

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Job all done yesterday. New fork installed and new seals & oilin both forks. The van driver was a bit slow paying the bill until I told him I was going to go through his insurance instead. He coughed up straight away then!

 

[exavid]

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Amazing how some people don't want to pay up when the screw up! Glad to hear you got it sorted out.

:clapper::clapper::clapper:

 

[Guest]

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englishted wrote:

The van driver was a bit slow paying the bill until I told him I was going to go through his insurance instead. He coughed up straight away then!

Hey englishted, :waving:You should have told him that the first day, :clapper:it would have helped him to make up his mind quicker. :whip:Job well done. :weightlifter:

:leprechaun: :18red: :leprechaun: