Sealed Bearings In Transmissions

A post about transmissions brought up something I remembered a long time ago. In our area next to the mountains it is pretty common to have to spend 3-4 hours in low range climbing up the side of some big steep hill. Back in 71 when I bought my jeep the fad was to replace the rear open bearing in the transmission with a sealed one to keep the transmission oil from draining back into the transfer case when going up a long steep hill or the other way around when going down hill a long time. Everybody did it including me (T-14) soon after bought it. Also seems like we had to plug a couple of small holes also. Please keep in mind this was 47 years ago, so my memory it not that great. Heck I have a hard time remembering what I had for breakfast this morning. Anyhow I have never heard anybody talk about doing this on the forum. Never had any transmission problem and that bearing is still there. So don't know if it helped or not.
Anybody have any thoughts about this? At the time it seemed like a pretty good idea and like I said everybody around here was doing it.

 

You can also remove the inner seal from the bearing so gear oil can lubricate it from the transmission.

 

Brian talks about this in the following video, starts around the 30 min mark...

 

Our parts manager lost two T14 front bearings and main drive gear on his 70 due to a long slow hill climb out in our area.
So he did the same as you described back in the early 70's. No more problem.

 

The T-90 has a different issue, in that there's either no seal or a felt seal on the input shaft that can drip. The T-14 has a regular neoprene lip seal in the front bearing cap that stps oil in that direction.

I'd expect the sealed bearing at the rear to de-couple the transmission and transfer case oil levels. This seems like a good idea, although how beneficial it would actually be I don't know. Oil transfer between the units is normally quite slow. How steep and how long would be required to see a difference?

 

Model T Fords (1908-1927) have a similar issue with the front main bearing. Engines are splash-lubed and the front end starves on hills.

A popular modification is an oil catcher above the (wet) flywheel, with a gravity drain tube to the front bearing bearing.

 

I’m running a sealed bearing in the rear of my t-18 due to oil flowing into the transfer case. I removed the inside seal so that the trans would lubricate it.

 

I wish I had known about that when I rebuilt my T 90. I drove my Jeep 50 miles to Toledo and back this summer and had trans dope leaking out of the bell housing, the felt seal is not working. I will pull it out again and fix the problem at some point.

 

Hmmm, I might have to do this mod in the future.

 

Do you have a link for Brian's video, don't thin I have seen this one. thanks

 

I put some one side sealed Koyo's in my T18 and one in my Dana 18 but they are yet to be run.