Passenger side axle stuck

I have an 86 chevy k20, I replaced the axle in the passenger side come to find out it's the wrong one. It is completely stuck pulled front diff cover it seems wedge in there. I've beat on it with a hammer and everything can't seem to get it to break free any suggestions would be awesome.

Full floater?

Might have a broken spider gear?

Should be able to push it out if it's an open front diff

Many parts stores have loaner tools with deposit. Need a slide hammer.

I have a 20 lb slide hammer I made, the axle always comes out. I would not hammer on the axle. As stated previously by Squaredeal, get a long bar run it through the other side and push it out that way. the spider gears will guide it.

Robert Bare said:

Full floater?

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Yes

Couldn't get a slide hammer on so got a massive crow bar. I have no clue why it got stuck splines aren't terrible only guess is. It's a 30 spline instead of 28. The amount of wrong parts these auto parts stores give you. Is insane.

Trust but verify isn't just a Reaganism.

It's reality in a world now, where all those that gave a $#it and had personal pride in the quality of their work as well as support from their "superiors" was stripped out of the workforce through covid attrition/early retirement, as well as crap quality standards for things made in you know frigging where. Add a bunch of greed and Bob's your uncle.

I hope your supplier stands behind their mistake. I have enough uh ohs when I order online, even with NAPA. It makes me crazy until the verification is done.

Craig Nedrow said:

I have a 20 lb slide hammer I made, the axle always comes out. I would not hammer on the axle. As stated previously by Squaredeal, get a long bar run it through the other side and push it out that way. the spider gears will guide it.

Click to expand...

A long bar good for doing this is just a plain old piece of conduit. And if you have axles out you can run conduit from where 1 wheel should be across to the opposite side wheel bearing to drive out wheel bearings. Like the world's longest punch.

Why did you have to replace the axle before?
Not checking and installing the wrong part is not the parts store fault, only the selling of the wrong part.
Possible axle was not hardened on the splines.
Regardless, the axle gear probably needs replaced, and the diff cleaned out, from all the metal. The end of the shaft seems chewed bad.

Similiar happened to me, I had correct # splines replacement shaft. Was replacing broken inner shaft and old one was hard getting out. Replacement shaft would start in but stop. Looking inside I could see it was cracked. Pretty sure it is a broken spider side gear.

I don't get it --- a 28 in a 30 spline?

You'd have to be some sort of gorilla with a 30# sledge hammer to try to drive the wrong axle in but I think you'd bust the carrier first if you somehow did it anyway. .

In spite of the diameter differences, there's no way you can hobb new splines on an axle with a side gear (not a spider --- spiders are the ones on the cross shaft).


I just had this same situation --- as I'd forgotten the 28/30 spline differences and I caught my mistake before the Eaton got shipped --- phew!

The 30 spline axle will not (I believe it's impossible to ---) get it past the carrier I/D ends --- the holes are too small and if you want to run 30s, you can't.

I'd be more tempted to say the axle bearing got hooked onto the thinned-out axle as it got caught on the deep lip. Mebbee ...

I have a short --- very non-professional video of a 28-spline axle with the extreme original neck-down for you to see.

Good lawd, look at the end of those splines. I highly doubt you get your money back on that since it’s obvious you tried to hammer the wrong part in place.

In the future, if parts don’t go together, take a minute to double check everything. Ask for help, something. During assembly the answer is almost never a bigger hammer.

They went together perfectly, coming out they did not. I did end up getting a refund not sure really what went on. My spider gear has no cracks that I can see teeth are good on it to. I'm new to working on differental stuff.