Why to Properly Remove Old Sealant

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

Hey everyone, Sue here at 1A Auto, and I just wanna give a quick little shout out and lesson on proper way of cleaning RTV gaskets, or even vapor gaskets. We're doing axle seals and bearings on this 2011 Ford, and when I took the axles out, I discovered a lot of our old RTV gasket in the tube. You can see it all right here. It's a rubber based sealant that goes on the cover. That's the only reason that's in here, is this goes on the actual differential cover. Now, it's not that big of a deal. It's not life-threatening back here, or shall I say mechanically unsafe, but it's just not done correctly. You know, if you're gonna clean the gasket out when you take this cover off, and you clean out, don't let the gasket sit down inside the well here. There's a little well, and that seems to be what happened here. Someone did a differential cover, and they let all that rubber sit in there. They didn't clean it out. Put the cover on with the new sealant, and went down the road.

That rubber's not gonna do much damage to any gears. These are steel, and the rubber will bend, but if we were doing something in an engine, and you have an RTV gasket like on a valve cover gasket, or a timing chain gasket, and you scrape and clean that and it drops down in that oil pan, you have the oil pump, which has a pickup screen. So screen just looks like a metal mesh screen in your kitchen for a colander. If that rubber gets stuck on that screen, which it will, because it's got a pump pulling up the oil, sucking it up like a straw, and that rubber clears...say it's supposed to be a 2" in circumference screen, and you have rubber spots all over it from that gasket, your pump's gonna suffer, and it's gonna cause engine damage. You'll start to get bearing shake, knocks, and engine breakdown. Can cost thousands of dollars over an improper job. So, DIYs, do it, do it right, do it proud. Go from A to B best way you can, and the correct way.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1aauto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.