leaking swivel joints

I'm looking for some help and advice here. At the weekend I noticed the passenger side swivel joint is leaking. The Jimny was MOTd in July and passed with an advisory for slight play in the front passenger side wheel bearing. I found a post here about the same thing - am I right in saying that replacing a pair of bearings and an oil seal will sort this out? The garage I took the Jimny to today were concerned that the swivel joints are pitted, not shiny - is this a problem? Pics below;

Drivers side

Passenger side (leaking)

The leak is because the halfshaft is vibrating in the oil seal in the end of the axle. This might be because the wheel bearing has gone, or it may be the swivel bearings (kingpin bearings).

You need an axle oil seal, swivel bearings (they are always gone, due to Suzuki's rubbish design*) and possibly a wheel bearing.
The guides on here are good: when you do the wheel bearing check you can blow and suck through the vacuum pipe spigots before you fit the freewheel hub, they get blocked with grease on assembly.

One extra thing: if the wheelbearing is gone, it stops the vacuum hub releasing, so the driveshaft will keep rotating on that side and make the leak worse.


As to the pitting: some people say it isnt a problem, but it makes the dust seal on the hub wear and leak water which wrecks the bearings. Mine looked just like yours, now they look like this:





I had the hubs off to change the swivel bearings, so I used a flapwheel and emery cloth to remove the rust, then gave them two coats of smoothrite (Aldi equivalent actually). Then I waited for them to dry ......

*Yes it is rubbish. It is not water tight, so if you go through a deep puddle you can say goodbye to your swivel bearings, enough water gets in in a normal winter to wreck the lower one. They are not even chromed, so they rust immediately and wreck what little seal there is.
Landrovers idea of replaceable chromed balls full of oil is far better. Even the old Jeep I had with open joints was better.

The design is shockingly weak but the new suggestion once replaced is to use motorcross grease.
I've yet to do this as i only read about it once i'd already changed mine. Next change(which is looming i think) i'll be trying the motorcross grease and the copper washers to try and add some longevity for a change.

I used the waterproof blue grease that Martin sells. It is supposed to be used on boat trailer wheel bearings and get dunked in the sea.
We will see what happens

My seals do pass very slightly, but no where near as gunky as those pictured.

Need to check my passenger side, as it feels different when i fully lock it round on works carpark... almost asthough the tyre is low.

I'm fairly prepared to do both king pins and bearings... ideally not until next year though.
My wheel wobble is on/off, somedays it happens and others it doesn't. Where i live its all narrow bumpy lanes, and if i get to 45 on one particular lane it'll wobble, but smooth roads are no issue ever

adamatdraycott wrote: My seals do pass very slightly, but no where near as gunky as those pictured.

Need to check my passenger side, as it feels different when i fully lock it round on works carpark... almost asthough the tyre is low.

I'm fairly prepared to do both king pins and bearings... ideally not until next year though.
My wheel wobble is on/off, somedays it happens and others it doesn't. Where i live its all narrow bumpy lanes, and if i get to 45 on one particular lane it'll wobble, but smooth roads are no issue ever

Mine also leak a little but they do it within days of use after being changed, its just the swivels though and not leaking down the wheel or spraying diff oil everywhere!

I had a similiar problem with going lock to lock and i had a shot track rod end.

This may not help but i used to drive a bumpy back road to work and just chug along at 40, i've since avoided it as i'm convinced it was doing my kingpins no good. Even at <30 it crashes into some dips and it's quite heavily cambered too, all i think contributed to accelerating the wear on top of the crud in there from off road use.