03 jeep liberty has what mech called a leak where axle meet differential housing. Mech repaired with an epoxy weld, but leaking again. It has 91K, but otherwise in good shape and has only needed a radiator other than scheduled/routine maintenance. Thinking whether a liberty axle off a dismantler place is worth it. Any opinions/recommendations appreciated.
Todays vehicles use pressed axle tubes that are just spot welded. Once they start leaking it’s too expensive to have removed, gears taken out, cleaned and the rewelded. Bone yard axle housing is the way to go. Make sure you get to correct gear ratio. Call your dealer and they should be able to tell you where to locate the code.
depending where the leak is located, it might be cheaper, much cheaper, to remove your axle from the vehicle, take it to a professional welder and have them repair it…
Either a used unit from another vehicle or you might check with a good welding shop to see if they could tack this leak closed.
A real good welder can certainly be thought of as a miracle worker sometimes.
(While touring the Logistics Center at Tinker AFB some years ago a demonstration was done where a double edged razor blade was broken in half and then rewelded. If that can be done I don’t see why a rear axle can’t be closed up.)
just to share my thought. I had the same issue with my jeep Liberty… And I cant really agree more with Caddyman… Try to remove the axle from the vehicle and have it welded… that’s what I did and everything worked well… I had it checked again to an “jeep parts” autoshop they saw it was doing great…
How bad is the leak? It might be easiest to just ignore it and keep an eye on the oil level in the diff.
Thanks. Your experience gives me some hope that I won’t be spending weekends climbing over wrecked jeeps. I know of a local driveline shop that used to have a good reputation that I hope has the skills to do this. I’ll check into that.
True. But because the leak seemed to start shortly after the power train warranty expired, I was more than a little ticked off at the timing of it. So I want to get it fixed if not too expensive.