Thanks to Harley Davidson and Rock and Roll I’m pretty much deaf. My wife has been complaining for the last couple of weeks about gear whine in the eS and today I finally heard it.
I decided to take a look at things and found seepage around the right side differential output shaft. I figured a lube top-up would quieten it down a bit. I pulled the vent/filler plug and inserted about 3 inches of 1/4" rubber hose coupled to 3/8" plastic hose attached to my lube container and started squeezing. All went well for about 8 ounces of oil; then I shot the rubber hose into the diff. No hope of retrieval.
So I’ve emailed Marlon to see if he has seals available and abandoned all hope of temporarily living with the seepage.
But I am wondering if the gear set will treat the rubber hose the same way it would treat cork, i.e., chew it up and consider it a cushion.
Any thoughts?
And yes, I do feel rather stupid.
99% sure the leak is from the input shaft bearing leaking and running down the gearcase. I would almost guarantee your motor is full of oil. Suggest you pull it before it burns up.
Seal type input shaft kits are available on Ebay to correct this problem. If the hose hasn’t broken the gear box the hose is probably in little bits by now.
Unfortunately it will provide little in the way of noise reduction and end up adhered to the walls of the case.
The only way to quiet down the gearbox is to replace all the bearings, and many times the input gear and intermediate gear set,
I am speaking from extensive experience. I marketed a polymer product for noise reduction that ultimately failed to do the job. In the end I rebuilt gearboxes on 2 of my machines to fix the noise.
Rodney
[quote=OLD HOUSEBOATER;27349]99% sure the leak is from the input shaft bearing leaking and running down the gearcase. I would almost guarantee your motor is full of oil. Suggest you pull it before it burns up.
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Sure doesn’t look like a leak; there’s no dripping and you have to look twice to see the grime accumulated from the weeping. But you might be right. I’ll be pulling the motor to replace the differential seals and bearings, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, the GEM is parked.
My eS is a 2009. Doesn’t it already have this type input shaft?
Hmmm The kit on Ebay wont help you. You have a 21 tooth input shaft. Polaris will sell you one though. Just for the heck of it pull the motor and check. It only takes 15 minutes.
I’ll let you know what I see when I rebuild the gearbox Rodney. We’re leaving for a month’s vacation in two weeks and I’ll be lucky to get the parts from Marlon before then. So I expect to attack it mid-December.
Good call Rodney!
I finally got around to rebuilding and the leak was definitely from the input shaft. It was just seepage so no real oil in the motor - just a bit of grime from the seep.
I did find a chipped tooth on my input shaft. It could have been from the rubber hose since the car was driven about a mile with the hose inside. One end of the hose was chewed up.
I’m waiting for parts again so not a simple one-day rebuild.