I just can’t leave well enough alone. There was a small drip that came from both sides of the transaxle where the half shafts enter the trans. As the transaxle had been fully rebuilt with all new bearings and seals it bothered me that there was any type of leak at all.
Speaking with a number of Europa owners the majority said they all leak and trying to eliminate the leak would be an exercise in futility. Well, that’s a challenge I would gladly accept.
One of my Europa friends (Roman) has been through this multiple times with his spectacular award winning black twin cam. He has had his half shafts out many times to replace the O-Rings behind the spacer and in front of the bearing collar, wanting to eliminate the slow drip. Roman had a full stock of soft, medium hard and flat o-rings that have been used to see what works the best. We had a robust conversation about this and came to the conclusion that most of these Transaxles are now 40 plus years old and they are just worn to the point that the o-rings won’t completely seal the splines as the tolerances are long gone.
Never the less, I wanted to try to reseal the transaxle half shaft input area to see if it was possible to eliminate the dripping. i was also going to change the gear oil to Red Line MTL gear oil which is thinner than what I was using so I knew my drip would only get worse.
After my conversation with a Roman and a baggie filled with three types of o-rings (I must be getting old. In my youth a baggie had something else than o-rings that I couldn’t wait to get home with) I spoke with my good friend and master sports car mechanic Drew to get his opinion as Drew helped me rebuild the transaxle. His advice was to re-install the manufactures recommended size o-rings. Now usually I do what ever Drew says........but this time I deducted for wear and new thinking and decided on using the flat edged o-rings instead of the round edge o-rings.
This past weekend I brought my Europa over to Drew’s toasty warm garage (he has a wood burning stove in his garage) and we went about jacking the car up, dropping the suspension, drained the gear oil and removed the inboard half shafts from the transaxle. The o-rings installed were in excellent shape. No distortion or tears. Cleaned the entire area of gear oil, made sure the collar was nice and smooth as it rotates inside the seal and installed the new flat edged o-rings. Put sealant on the threads of the capture plate, tightened to spec, confirmed right number of shims were installed on both sides and reassembled everything. Then added 3.6 pints of gear oil as per spec.
I drove the car for about 50 miles afterwards (It was a glorious chilly fall day with blue skies and very little traffic on the back roads) and parked it in my garage.
The next morning I went out to the garage, got into the Lotus position (on my hands and knees peering under the rear of the Europa) and confirmed no drip!
Let’s see how long that lasts..... But I have the satisfaction that the day spent replacing o-rings was not a total waste of time.