Truck and trailer operators can now  reduce the risk of premature wheel-end failures, as well as the high costs associated with unplanned downtime and vehicle recovery, by changing to a new wheel-end seal design from SKF.

Scotseal X-Treme is the latest addition to SKF’s  line of wheel-end seals for drive, steer and trailer axles: Scotseal Classic, Scotseal Long Life, Scotseal Pro and Scotseal Plus XL. It offers the vehicle service market and OE truck and trailer manufacturers reliability and long life in the harshest of operating conditions.

Scotseal X-Treme offers an extension of the current 3-year full parts and labour warranty provided by Scotseal Plus XL to a new market-leading 5 years for truck and 7 years for trailer applications for the new product under the SKF Trouble Free Operation coverage plans TFO 5 and TFO7 respectively. SKF has been able to offer this guarantee thanks to new design features that include optimized primary and axial lip profiles, new metal unitiser geometry and the use of an upgraded HNBR lip material which enhances the performance of SKF’s “wave” lip design. Collectively, these new features deliver unrivalled under-lip temperatures, lower running friction, improved contamination exclusion and longer seal life.

With a wheel-end seal replacement and hub relube taking around two hours, vehicle downtime costs can quickly soar. Thanks to its new seal design, Scotseal X-Treme has the potential to cut unscheduled downtime events by half and could drastically reduce wheel-end failure events due to seal problems. The new seal is also designed to cope with the higher temperatures generated by braking systems that are compliant with new ‘shorter stopping distance’ legislation.

Scotseal X-Treme will be available for most standard axle types by the beginning of 2018 in a variety of sizes.