What Happens When the Floating Face Seal Fails

A leak behind the sprocket means that the floating face seal is no longer able to achieve a tight seal. Not only can gear oil leak out, allowing damage and corrosion to the planetary side of your final drive, but abrasive material can now make its way inside your final drive.

All the mud, sand, concrete, silt, dirt, cement, dust, sludge, and other debris that build up in the undercarriage and around your final drive now has access to the precision gears and bearings in your travel motor.  Those contaminants mix with the gear oil and form a thick and often smelly sludge.  That sludge does the opposite of lubrication -- allowing excessive heat, abrasion, erosion, scarring, scratching, gouging, and metal-to-metal contact to occur until your final drive no longer functions.