I have only seen the cork seals on the Cdn carriers. Hardly a positive seal, especially with a hub that gets grease pumped into it. The excess grease picks up sand and dust, which formulates into the perfect abrasive.
I was able to replace the cork seals with normal wheel seals when I did my carrier a decade back, but for the kind of pampered service my carrier is ever going to do, the cork would have been fine.
I was recently working with some T-16 wheels, which had a different bearing setup and some better sealing. I ended up pulling all that T-16 stuff out of the wheels and replacing it with standard UC bearings and cork seals, as that was what they were going on. I didn't want to confuse the next generation of owner.
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