Hi all

Past few days been looking at my parent's Wrangler after multiple cases of DW symptoms and noticed that the passenger side front wheel appears to a oil/dirt (sand?) mixture all around it as seen in the photos below.
My guess is that it's a possible broken inner axle seal but still have my doubts so looking to confirm that if I am on the right track.

I'm also a bit stumped on if a broken inner axle seal would cause a death wobble.
My suspicions is that this issue has been there for a while as it appears the gunk mixture looks to have some sand but the Jeep hasn't been on a beach (or off-roading) in over a year so wouldn't be surprised if it may have offset the wheel balance after building up for so long.

Not sure

What do you think?
Cheers

 

That looks pretty oily to me....and likely why the sand is sticking. I'd clean it off real good with a degreaser and then monitor. I wouldn't say "broken" axle seal, but rather "leaking" seal which is a common issue. No, that did not cause a wobble.

 

I agree 100%. Clean it up and watch for further leakage. I would add, check the fluid level in the differential.

 

Cheers for the responses, glad to hear it could only be a leak for now, I wasn't too keen on spending my free time this week disassembling the axle but now it's back to square one with this wobble haha.
Any chance a problem with an axle could cause a wobble or do I have more luck going over the suspension again?

 

You're going to be looking at steering components, not suspension. Make sure the two track bar bolts are torqued to 125 ft lbs, then look at ball joints. If those check out then best to have someone in the jeep turning steering wheel side to side (without jeep on) and look for play in the frame side TB joint. After that it's time to look at DL and TR joints. I'd put my $5 on ball joints.

 

Sounds like a good plan, cheers mate

 

And not to burst your bubble but those axle seals come out from the inside of the diff. So you have to dismantle at each wheel, pull axles, remove diff carrier then press the seals in from the inside using a special tool then reassemble.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

But the time I did it I used a short piece of large diameter pipe (2"?) with a plate welded to form a flat surface on one end and several feet of a smaller diameter pipe (1"?) from the far side of the axle tube to hammer on that flat plate.

 

In offering other choices from Mark's suggestion you can actually make a seal press using a plate fixed on a 1/2" (or greater) threaded rod and a moving plate on the other end then use a nut to turn and push the plates apart to press the seals in. Make sure you scrape and clean out the axle tubes though as you may catch some crap and put it on your new seal when installing the axles. The axles have a thin white plastic splined washer up on the spline end that is used to hold the axle off the tube bottom when installing and keeps the spline and seal surface out of the crap and dust. Make sure you keep these but I do believe the seal kits come with new ones but they are not designed to pile up the crap by the seal hence scrape the dirt out first. I measured the distance and used a wet dry vac tube with some 1" PVC conduit taped to it in there when I removed my axles to do the wheel bearings. Did not have to put new seals in and they are ok because I did the above procedures.