Anybody else seen failures on new pitman shaft seals?

As most of you know, I rebuild a lot (100+) of steering gears on the side. In fact I am about ready to become a vendor.

The reason for this post is that for the last six months or so I have had a high failure rate on the pitman shaft seals on the newer boxes. I just had another failure and the customer came over and we tore the box apart on the bench together. Everything looked great. The pitman shaft was nice and clean (I always hit them with 800 grit to remove any crap). The seal looked good and seemed nice and tight. I had replaced the main bearing and it seemed fine as well. Absolutely everything looked perfect. I used a dab of The Right Stuff on the outside of the new seal and put it back together. It worked fine for a day or so and then started leaking bad again.

I am only seeing this on the later model boxes with the single seal, not on the Renix era with the dual seal setup. I even swithed vendors on the rebuild kits a few months ago.

Has anybody else seen this?

I am looking at using a woodruff cutter on my CNC mill and do a setup so I can put a snap ring channel up where the Renix era boxes have it, and then use the better Renix seal setup.

The funny thing is that I have probably rebuilt 50+ of the newer boxes before running into this problem but almost half of my boxes lately have failed.

I haven't seen any yet.

What brand are the seals in the rebuild kits you are getting?

The kits are from Edlemann and two other brands I can't remember right now. I did a good look at the seals and they all look exactly the same but no name or numbers. The mold marks are identical. My bet is that they are all from the same cheap Chinese manufacturer.

If you look in the rebuild kit packets, the diagrams and instructions are all the same for all the brands. I was hoping to find a different seal manufacturer.

I have a fall back, but it does take some time to machine each casting for a different set of seals.

I have machined a mold for making a polyurethane plug for the end to keep out mud and dirt. I am going to start molding a bunch to use on the boxes as well.

the only problems i've had with the seals was when the backlash adjustment screw was tightened so much by the rebuilder that the box was binding up and it blew the inner snap ring out of the groove the first time, and the pitman shaft bearing needles blew out of the cage and tore up the seal the second time. didnt realize it was the problem until i swapped the box with another and realized it was about 10 times easier to steer, then investigated the problem. The adjustment screw was actually screwed down below the nylon in the nylock jam jut right out of the box.