KUBOTA L4300 REAR AXLE SEAL REPLACEMENT

Welcome back friends. Today's project is changing the rear axle seal on our Kubota L4300DT, and here it is right here. We already got the wheel off. What has happened is some bale and twine got twisted around the rear axle, worked its way up into that seal, and ruined the seal. It won't quit leaking, and it's just kind of a mess, so we're just going to have to get it done. And we're going to try and do it ourselves rather than spend a ton of money taking it over to the tractor repair facility. Seal was about $28. You can see we've got our wheel all chalked front and rear on the other side. We've got two jack stands under here on some decent platforms, and my jack is still under there. I don't want this to fall on me. Well, we're going to get started on this here, and just to let you know, we're going to have to take, we thought we was going to take the complete roll bar off, but we only have to take part of it because it is two pieces. So you can disconnect that half up there, and then you've got six bolts here. You've got two bolts up here, and then I had to change where my jack stand was. My jack stand was right under here. So you've got those two bolts there, and it stays in place. It's part of the frame, and then we're going to start getting all the bolts around the cases there. We're going to split those cases. So we've got a nice clean pan there, and we're going to drain our fluid and see where it goes from there. Yeah, this thing's pretty stuck. Let's see if we can tap it here a little bit. Okay, looks like I want to be able to get this off by myself, but the next thing you want to do is prepare a place to wherever you're going to put this where you're ever going to work on it. So we're going to take it in there to the welding table, and this thing's heavy, so just be ready when it comes out. Yeah, buddy. I went to the Messick's website, and this is a good place to get your parts too. I'll put a link to it down below, but I printed out this exploded view of the parts section here. Let's just go over it real quick. This is our axle. That's our seal. It only shows one part of it there. That's a snap ring and a bearing. All that is encapsulated in the end of the housing here. Inside the housing on the shaft here of the axle is going to be this steel sleeve. Follow this here. You've got this gear. That is a locking nut and a bearing. So we have this housing off. This is all one assembly, and this is all we're going to have to take apart. We don't have to go any farther than that. We're going to need a couple special tools here, and I'll show you what those are next. Okay, we've got our housing up here on the bench, and in the interest of time, I've already cleaned this thing up, disassembled it, put the new seal in and everything, but I want to show you how I did it. I didn't want to waste a bunch of your time with oil everywhere and me hammering and beating on things and figuring stuff out. So I just want to show you how this thing comes apart, how it goes back together. It's pretty easy. The tools you're going to need, you're going to need a gear puller to get this bearing off here. You're going to need a wrench. We just used a pipe wrench here for the nut behind it. We'll show you how that goes. Got a seal puller here that makes getting seals out of housing really easy, but if not, hey, a couple of screwdrivers will get it done. And you're going to need the old BFH here. A couple four-by-four blocks are going to come in handy and maybe a two-by-four. So first thing we're going to have to do is get this bearing off. Going to use your gear puller, and it comes off pretty easy. It's not a big deal. So get that off. Behind that is going to be this locking nut, and if you'll notice, this thing has a keyway in it, and then there's a set screw to hold it in place. So once you get that set screw out, take your wrench, and this thing comes off pretty easy. Wasn't hard at all. Once you get that off, you're going to have this gear here, and notice how the gear is on here. See these numbers? Make sure that's to the outside because it does go in a certain way. Slide the gear off. Remember when I was showing you the diagram that said there wasn't a whole lot of parts to this, and there's not. Inside here is this metal sleeve we were talking about. It can go either way. Not a big deal. And then you have your axle exposed here, and the next thing you got to do is knock it out of the housing. And the way you do that, you have it up here. Just let it rest. Take a two-by-four, put it right here, and give it about four or five good whacks. It's going to pop out the other side no problem. Once you get it out, take our four-by-fours here, make a little platform. Because this axle is sticking out of the housing here, it won't stand up by itself. And that bearing does tend to fall out. Don't worry about it. We get it up there nice and steady. Then what we're going to do is we're going to pull the axle out, and we're going to take that inner seal and pull it right off the axle. It comes off pretty easy. Once you have the axle out, take your seal puller and get this seal out of the housing up here. Okay, we got our new seal here, and this is a kind of a two-part program. You got this outer seal that this is going to go in the housing, and then this is what actually goes around the axle. Put your new seal in, take a little wood block, your hammer, hammer it down nice and flat all the way around. Then on your axle, you're going to take the outer part of that seal, put a little grease on the axle, a little grease on the seal, and you can just push this into place with your hands. It doesn't take much pressure until it's nice and seated. Then you have your housing up here where you got some space down below. Just take the axle, slide the whole thing back into the housing, and then wood block, hammer right up here on top, and it will seat itself right back into that bearing. There's just a little tension with this bearing in here, but it's not anything too tough at all, but it'll go right back into place. Once you finish that, right back to where we were. Use our wood blocks there for a little stability. Then this bearing here, it just continues to, it likes to fall in and out. Not a big deal. You can see it goes in nice and easy. Clean it up in the parts washer. Then we take our gear and our sleeve, just like that. That's just a big spacer is all that is. Then once again, make note of your numbers. It was on the outside. There's not any numbers on this side, and that's the way you want it to go. Get it up on the splines, pushes right into place. Take your locking nut, get it back over to the keyway there, and then you can take your set screw, take a little dab of medium Loctite, put it in there. That'll hold it in place. Then the last thing you got to do is this bearing here. Get the bearing started on the axle. Take your wood block, whack it a few times, and it will be seated up against this nut. Everything will be good to go, ready to go right back onto your tractor. The other thing you want to do is you want to get a putty knife. You want to make sure you get all that old RTV off, and then I cleaned it up with some brake parts cleaner. Do the same thing on the tractor side of this surface. Get some RTV and put it on the tractor side. You don't want it on this side, and then get your buddy to help you slide it into place onto those posts that are already sticking out there, and it'll line it up just the way you want it. You'll be good to go. Again, just put some more fluid in there, bolt everything up, and you're good to go. I know you don't want to see all that. It's pretty straightforward how it goes back on the tractor. So there it is, folks. I'm going to put a link below down to Messick's Tractor Supply. They have all these parts that you need. Say you mess something up or you see a bad bearing, the seals are going to run you less than 30 bucks. They ship pretty quick out there, and they also provided that nice exploded view. So not a lot of parts here, not a lot of specialty tools. This is something you can do yourself, save a bunch of money, and just keep it here at home. So if you've got any comments or questions, feel free to leave it below. If you liked our video, give us one of these, and don't forget to check out some of our other videos. We do a bunch of other stuff around here, fishing and knives and guns and all kinds of goopy stuff. So until next time, you guys be safe, and we hope to see you down the road. Adios.