Front drive shafts oily ?

A friend is as I type looking at an 2001 ish Jimny to possibly buy and has noticed an amount of oil/grease on the wheel end of the front drive shafts where it attaches to the back of the wheel, the semi spherical arrangement/ coupling.

Is it normal to see oil/grease there?

No its not. There are perhaps a million posts on this, but basically the spherical knuckle/Swivel joint has a seal to stop the oil coming out of the Diff, this more than likely needs replacing.

Also the Kingpin/Swivel bearings could also be on their way out, in particular the bottom one.

A messy job but not hard.

Look in the Bigjimny shop it has all you need.
www.bigjimny.com/store/index.php/service...g-kit-koyo-/p_6.html

Has the Jimny been offroaded much?

As has just been said, very common.

Suck air in over your teeth, make lots of tut tut noises and make a low offer.

Then fix it for £23.75 from the store

Hi everybody,
It was me looking at the car !! Basically an 05 plate with 40k on it. It does not look to have had a hard life - the interior/exterior in good order but the underside is in need of a waxoyl !! The spheres are wet on the bottom havles - I could see the seal with bolt heads around it - there looks like a small build up of a dark brown 'greese; at the bottom part of the seal. I could not detect a steering wheel shimy but thought the brakes were a bit 'light'. The steering was also very light' but these could be std as this is my first Jimny experiance?

Marco

Steering tends to be light.

The "seal" you can see is not the seal we are talking about, its a small inner one.

If its just grease then you will be ok, its when its dripping that you have an issue.

Martin

Thanks Martin,

The spheres were only 'wet' on the bottom halves but the NS apeared worse than OS. They were fairly grimey & the seal (that I could see) did not look fantatic. However, I checked out 4 wheel drive engagement & all seemed OK.

M