This is a Mercedes-Benz G-Class G63, the AMG performance version of the G-Wagon. The episode is about a front suspension problem where water can get into a key joint area, causing grease to leak and making repairs costly.
The steering knuckle is a key part that helps the wheel steer and move. If grease is leaking there, it usually means the seals aren’t keeping things out anymore, and water can get in and cause trouble.
Term
front suspension and drivetrain
The front suspension is what allows the front wheels to move properly over bumps. The drivetrain is what delivers power to the wheels, and together they determine how the front end is built and sealed.
Four-wheel drive means power goes to all four wheels to help with traction. Even if the car is mostly used on-road, water can still get into joints and seals.
A seal is like a gasket that keeps grease from leaking and keeps water out. In this case, the seal around the steering knuckle pivot is the barrier—if water gets in, it can cause the problem they’re seeing.
The BYD Seal is an electric car (a battery-powered sedan). The podcast is talking about a part near the steering area and whether it’s sealed well enough to keep water out. If seals fail, moisture can get into places it shouldn’t.
A disc brake is the braking system that uses a spinning metal disc and pads to slow the car down. They mention it because it’s near the area they’re inspecting on the front end.
Bearings let the wheel/axle rotate smoothly. They also need to be set up precisely—too loose causes wobble and wear, too tight can cause heat and noise.
The Toyota Land Cruiser is a large SUV designed for driving on rough roads and off-road trails. It’s built to be tough and handle bumps and rocks better than many everyday cars. The podcast brings it up because the speaker has used one in situations where they sometimes hit rocks.
The CV joint is what lets the axle keep driving the wheels even when the suspension moves. If the boot tears, water gets in and the joint can rust and start making noise.
“Genuine Mercedes parts” means Mercedes-made replacement parts. They’re often chosen because they’re designed to fit and work correctly in the original system.
A CV joint is what connects parts of the drive axle so power can still be sent to the wheels while the suspension moves. It’s designed to keep the wheel-side rotation smooth, even when the angle changes.
A U-joint is a connector that lets the drive shaft bend as the wheels move. It doesn’t keep things rotating at exactly the same speed the way a CV joint does, so it can feel less smooth.
Term
pivot on the knuckle
The knuckle is part of the front suspension/steering that the wheel assembly connects to. Bearings there help the moving parts pivot smoothly; if they’re contaminated or worn, the front end can feel off.
OEM grease is the specific grease the manufacturer recommends for that part. Using the wrong grease can cause the joint not to be protected properly over time.
The knuckle assembly is a key front steering/suspension piece that lets the wheel turn. Repacking it with the right grease helps keep the moving parts lubricated and protected from water.
Rusted means the metal has started corroding due to moisture. If that happens inside the steering joint, it can stop the seal from working well and make the parts wear out faster.
LIVE
Hi, it's Mark. I'm here with Bernie Pawlik. Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Vancouver's best auto service experience and we're talking cars. How you doing today, Bernie?
Doing very well. So today's guest is a 2016 G-Wagon G63. What was going on with this
incredibly expensive vehicle? The front steering knuckles had some grease leaking out of them.
So this has a very old style, very heavy duty front suspension and drivetrain,
almost unfitting for the fanciness of this vehicle. But it's very tough, but it is vulnerable to water
getting inside the steering knuckle. And that's what was happening with this vehicle. So the owner
had a service done at Mercedes. They found the issue, gave them a quote, it was exceptionally high
and asked if we could do anything better. And we were able to come up with something substantially
better with the same equivalent quality of parts and all OEM Mercedes parts and do the job.
And what kind of kilometerage did this vehicle have?
Only 70,000. So a youngster. So is this kind of common for vehicle to have this sort of issue at
that kind of lifespan? You never know. If you were, say, out driving through rivers and streams,
this would be an issue that could happen. I don't believe this vehicle has probably ever
been through that kind of thing, as most G-wagens never really leave the road.
They have a nice fancy on-road four-wheel drive. But nonetheless, moisture can get in. We live in
a wet climate in Vancouver, so water can get in or snow or whatever and seep in. There's a big
enormous seal. It's a big round ball where the steering knuckle pivots and it's got a very large
seal. And if water gets into that seal, then it's all over with. It's well sealed, but it's fairly
easy for that to happen. Let's go to some pictures here. Here's our G-wagon. Beautiful G-wagon, yep.
And is this the AMG model? It's the AMG model, yep. When you start it up, you can tell it sounds
like a race car. It's got a pretty cool sounding exhaust and tailpipes that stick down the side.
Not so practical for off-road, but it looks good. And we're looking at the disc brake here,
so this is where the issues are happening. Exactly. Yeah, you're pointing right to where
the issue is happening. So we're basically got the wheel off here. We're just getting started
on the job and yeah, the brake disc is still on and that's what the disc with the brakes removed.
We're about to tuck into getting the knuckle apart at the very top, just behind that bracket there
that sticks out. Yeah, right there. That's the plate that holds the bearings that hold the
knuckle in place. So that has to be removed. There's four very large bolts and then at the
bottom there's the same thing and we pull those plates off and then there's some seals in behind
the knuckle and then the knuckle can come off. What are those bearings doing? Is that letting
the wheel turn from side to side basically? Exactly, yeah. And there's shims in there that
calibrate so there's not excess flop and play. So it's measured out. There's certain shims which
we just replaced the originals because bearings are all within tens of thousands of inches exactly
the same, very precise. So the brake goes on this piece on the right here and the wheels outside
of that. So this is the end of the axle ultimately. That's right, yeah. So we pull that cap off of
there and then the axle and bolts from there and so the axle is all cased and hidden inside which
is very good for an off-road vehicle. It makes it very tough. You can crack through rocks with
these kind of things and I had a Land Cruiser once and hit a couple of rocks from time to time,
not very fast. I think I've broken something and the rock was crumbled. These things are built tough.
Now we've gone inside this case here. Yeah, exactly. This doesn't look good. No, this is what grease
and water looks like after it mixes. This is the CV joint, the constant velocity joint on the front
drive axle and the boot is torn open and you can see the ball. There's six ball bearings that are
part of the drive. There's six large ball bearings and they're all rusted up. So yeah, so this is
one of the parts we replaced. It's actually the singly the most expensive part of this job and
there's two of them. Those two alone are just an insane amount of money. You can buy them for cheap
on places like Amazon and eBay but we don't do that. Then we put the genuine Mercedes parts in.
And would there be any noise associated with it at this level of kind of damage or wear?
There certainly could be. We didn't hear anything and you would probably only hear that when you
engage it and lock the four-wheel drive system in place. And the CV joint that lets the wheel
literally go up and down, side to twist to turn and it's a magical item basically.
It is. You can do the same thing with the universal joint but the reason they call it a
constant velocity joint is because the speed of the input shaft is the same as the speed of the
output shaft whereas with a U-joint it'll actually change because the U-joint only has
two planes of movement whereas the CV joint can move infinite amounts of movement. I'm not a
physicist or scientist but that's my best explanation. And this is basically everything
out and this is the housing that we were looking at back here. This on the inside with all of that
sort of it. Yeah and you can see a pool of brownish stuff in the bottom. That is water.
There should be no water inside there. Not good. No, not good. Yeah so basically we clean all this
out. We did both sides by the way. Most of these photos are on the right hand side but did we clean
everything out? It's a not bolt together job but it is grungy and dirty that's for sure.
And then these bearings here, the one on the right, is bronzy looking because that grease has
been mixed with water and these bearings are basically for that pivot on the knuckle. I remember
we talked about the four bolts that hold that piece. Up top here and see the other one that's
down here. Yeah so one bearing sits on top, one bearing sits on the bottom. There's a lot of parts
we replace in this job and so these are the knuckles that you can see the hubs where the
wheels bolt on and there's wheel bearings so we replace the wheel bearings and seals as well.
That's another additional amount of work because those were contaminated also and here we're starting
to look at new parts. This is a new CV joint bolted into place. You can see the brand new
boot not torn and ripped and this is packed with its own grease. This is where it was ripped almost
not existent. Exactly yeah and here's what it should look like. There's an actual rubber boot
yeah. I find it interesting in 70,000 kilometers that these boots are ripped apart because most
cars that have a CV axle like this which basically sits out to the elements, the boots rarely crack
or break open like that until you hit like 150, 200,000 maybe even more kilometers so it's interesting
that it's packed away in grease and in a sealed environment yet the boot's blown apart. Engineering
that seems like it should work but didn't really work that well and here we have it packed with
grease. We use the OEM Mercedes grease in here. It's an interesting kind of light color almost
looks like Vaseline but it's not. It does look like Vaseline. Yeah I don't know maybe yeah anyways
it's very expensive grease but to me I'm always like why save a couple of dollars on some fluids
when you might put the wrong thing in and not do the job properly. So this is basically
repacked the knuckle assembly. This kind of rounded piece here and you can make out there's
another one up top. That's where these would sit so that lets the wheel turn left and right
basically. The one thing I did not take a picture of that I probably should. Mark just go to the
top of the pictures and if you go two pictures down you can see this plate has a bunch of bolts
around it. This is the knuckle and those bearings hold it to pivot but what's bolted onto those
six bolts there is a metal plate and underneath that is a big huge seal and that seals on the
ball of the knuckle. That's what kind of keeps the water out and the grease in and it's a regular
service item. You should pack it with grease because when you pack it with grease it forces any
moisture out and it keeps the ball lubricated so it keeps the seal in good shape and works. So yeah
so I think that's the end of our show. And after all that work happy customer. Yeah yeah car's awesome
now it didn't really come in going oh it's crunching and grinding and things are broken.
It's smart to fix this beforehand because if you leave it too long that ball can get rusted and if
it gets rusted then it definitely won't seal well that takes time and then they make it out a really
good material so they don't rust easily but that could happen or if those bearings at the top and
bottom start getting loose things would flop around you can end up costing a lot of extra money to
fix things on an already exceptionally expensive repair job as we're looking at so you really
wouldn't want to add anything more to the cost. If you're looking for service for your G-Wagon or
any Mercedes the people to see in Vancouver are at Pollock Automotive. Vancouver's best
auto service experience you can book your appointment at PollockAutomotive.com or you
can call them to book 604-327-7112. They'll talk to you they'll find out what's going on they'll
get ready for your appointment Pollock Automotive you have to book ahead they're always busy thank
you so much for watching and listening thanks Bernie thank you Mark and thanks for watching
About this episode
Grease leaking from the front steering knuckles on a 2016 Mercedes G63 leads the hosts into a detailed front-axle walkthrough. They explain how water intrusion around the steering knuckle seal can ruin lubrication, and why the job is more than cosmetic—rusted components won’t seal properly. The discussion then expands to CV joint diagnosis: a torn boot, water contamination, and rusted ball bearings. They also cover how shims set bearing clearance and what noise you might notice when 4WD is engaged.
