 I finally finished installing new sure seals and new brakes. It was a bigger job than I had thought. I removed old sure seals, greased the bearing and installed new seals. It actually looked like the oil leakage was coming more from between the shims, bolts, and hub gasket (or lack of gasket), than from the axle seals.... but, once I had started, there was no turning back. Installing the new sure seals was fast & easy using my "sure seal install tool" (a piece of 3" PVC pipe). see link. I also heated-up the hub up a bit by sitting it in front of my reddy heater, and froze the new sure seals in the freezer before installing. Don't know if it helped, but the seals started right in with a couple good wacks on the PVC pipe. Then I switched to a lighter hammer to tap in the seals so I didn't overshoot the seal depth in the hub. I also found that each axle had a different arrangement of shims & gaskets compared to the backing plate and hub. I installed the shims between the backing plate and axle housing, and made paper gaskets to go between the hub and backing plate. I used a thin coating of silicone around the hub to try to insure no oil gets into the brakes again.
Now I can lock-up the rears easily when I stomp the brakes!
What fun! I also had a nice puddle of steering box oil on my garage floor that dripped out over several days.... going to have to do something about that some day...
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