2N Rear Axle

Remember that these parts were designed in the days before Finite Element Analysis. Iron was cheap, added weight on a tractor was not necessarily a bad thing, and the limitations of the sand-cast process tended to make castings bigger and thicker than the application actually called for.

Water in the rear axle? It's a fact of life. All you can do is make sure that the obvious points of entry (the gear shift lever) are properly booted. But condensation is what it is.

Removing the bearing carrier to slide the axle out can be a bugger. They tend to get themselves well fitted into the end of the axle housing. You can't beat on the end of the axle too hard because the bearing won't take it. There's a trick that involves the use of a couple of handyman jacks to force the two apart. Judicious use of heat on the end of the casting (to expand the socket) may also free them up.

HTH

llater,

llamas