I wonder if what was discolouring the oil was possibly dirt getting in through the face seals.? We used to get water/dirt ingress a lot in our excavators if they were used in sloppy underfoot conditions and travelled a lot.Well the drive that had oil in it is good. I drained it with a magnet in the drain oil being drained then filled it with diesel. There was nothing in the oil coming out that stuck to the manget. I ran it for three minutes in each direction with the diesel in it and drained that. Tipped the bucket on edge and swished the magnet around for a bit. Absolutely nothing on the magnet. I just finished filling it back up with clean oil. Going to get started on the bad side now
You're on the money with that assessment. Once broken loose it should spin off pretty easy. If you need to haul on a ratchet or breaker bar, the threads are galling up.The behaviour maybe.? Once it has been "cracked loose" for the first time it should simply screw off the spindle using a relatively low amount of force. If at any moment after the point where it breaks loose the force required to turn it starts to increase that would indicate something is causing it to hang up on the threads. Stopping at that point and splitting the nut off would most likely not result in significant thread damage to the spindle, it's carrying on trying to turn it that would do the damage.
The creamy colour of the remnants of the oil sticking to the planetary gears, ring gear, & carrier gives the impression that it's been contaminated with water. In the case of a leaking face seal it's always possible to have 2-way traffic. If oil can get out water can get in.Getting the cap off wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Prior to getting the cap off, I dug all dirt and crap out from behind the sprocket. It was packed full of junk. Pieces of roofing shingles and plastic. The inside of the drive was all still wet, wasn’t dry dry. I don’t see any damage either, at least on the parts you can see. They all look good. The bolts weren’t very tight either