Front axle swivels pitted and corroded

I have a 2006 Jimny and at the last service my garage told me the front axle swivels were leaking oil and corroded. They tried to be helpful but advised me I would need to source replacement parts myself and were unable to say if I needed to find a complete replacement axle or if the swivel was a separate unit. Is anyone able to give me a bit of guidance as to whether the axle and swivel are one combined part and what sort of cost I should be looking at? Many thanks for any advice you have

Inside the swivel there should be grease and inside the axle there is oil. A simple shaft seal should be changed and at the same time I would inspect and most likely change the king pin bearings and swivel seals.

Rust on the swivel is not a show stopper, can be sanded down and painted as well.

All these parts are easy to come by and serviceable

This is a Job most of us do ourselves, so any good garage should be capable. Still I have heard many having bad experiences or strange soulutions been chosen, or not all parts have been changed.

Thanks for getting back to me. I omitted to say that it was leaking oil so that ties in with your advice. Thank you

The large swivel seal is just there to keep the dust out, it also keeps the heavy waterproof grease in to a certain extent.

If the swivels are pitted the large seal won't work as well as it should, but it doesn't do a great deal anyway so as Yakuza says, just clean up the existing swivel.

The oil leak is coming from the shaft seal, inside the swivel, it's easy enough to change once the hub is off. If the seal has gone the king pin bearings have probably also gone so change them both at the same time and fit a new large seal.

Martin sells the king pin bearings, large swivel seal and grease, look in the BigJimny store here www.bigjimny.com/store/ or in the banner at the top of the page. He is competitive on price against other online retailers and a lot cheaper than Suzuki.

It's a fairly easy job to do at home or for a garage. Tip, buy new swivel seal bolts, mine were all rusty and they don't cost much.

The brake caliper bolts and one set of king pin bolts on mine were very tight, they did come out but took a bit of a stern talking to with a good fitting socket and large breaker bar or hammer, depending what would fit in.

Robin

Rub them down and paint with por15 paint 
Then rub and paint 3 more times with same paint 
The kit with smallest tin of por15 is more than enough 
I did mine year's ago still going strong 

^^^^^^+1 on the POR15 paint if you want to refurbish the surface to give the seal a chance. It's indirectly responsible for the oil leak as this large swivel seal keeps dirt and water out of the kingpin bearings, which when they fail cause the inner axle oil seal to leak.
Picture of refurbished surface with POR15, it's getting on a bit now and done a lot of miles, still good, as are the kingpin bearings. 
 

Leaving them rusty is also fine. I've never touched mine or changed the swivel seal. I've done the driveshaft oil seal and kingpin bearings a couple of times in 100,000 miles of Jimny ownership, its a £30, 45min job.

wrote:

Leaving them rusty is also fine. I've never touched mine or changed the swivel seal. I've done the driveshaft oil seal and kingpin bearings a couple of times in 100,000 miles of Jimny ownership, its a £30, 45min job.
 

Oh what it is to be young!

Nowadays it takes me 45 minutes to get the car jacked up, the wheel off and to find the required tools and my little stool to sit on.....