Differential swap / bought it, work and install now

[CountKrunk]

I'm a total tow noob. when i brought my golf cart home it had a super steep incline on the interstate. Truck was WOT around 2200 rpm and 35 mph haha.

Still passed one semi hauling something extremely large and heavy, they were doing around 15mph so, relatively, i was flying! Haha.

 

[SirRobyn0]

Regarding the brakes: On the old FF axles you have to remove the hub to access the brake shoes cause the wheel studs are pressed in thru the drum and then the hub. Rebuild the brakes and replace all seals in the hubs when you have them off. The hubs with slip on drum and press on drum are not interchangeable.

In the brake department my basic plan is to pull both sides apart, (which reminds me I need to bring my socket for the bearing retainer nuts home this weekend). If everything looks good then it looks good and I'll run the bearings and brakes that are in there, I'll replace the seals regardless. But if anything is at all questionable I'll do the brakes and bearings if needed. I think my money is best spent on the safety aspect of the differential before the gears.

Like you said, present company excluded (the gear heads here in this thread), many do t understand the difference between towing across Kansas with a head wind or tail wind vs towing in the mountains. And we don’t even have the elevation factor here. Take your same rig and add another mile in elevation to Umtanun, Manastash and Snoqualmie, either direction, and you’d never even be tempted to try OD. Your be happy if it gets out of 2nd gear! Lol.
Sounds like you found a great deal on an axle. Should be a great start to that project!

Thanks. It's a long time coming really and even if I end up running the 3.73's for a while, like I said before at least any money I put into this differential, it'll be the differential that stays with the truck.

 

[Grit dog]

Rob, considering unlike most of us, you have car lifts at your disposal, and you’re not hauling tons of turkle feed around like you were, I’d consider slapping the axle in as-is and send it!
Less $ upfront and ease of gear swap later since you can just throw the truck on a lift when it comes time.

 

[SirRobyn0]

Rob, considering unlike most of us, you have car lifts at your disposal, and you’re not hauling tons of turkle feed around like you were, I’d consider slapping the axle in as-is and send it!
Less $ upfront and ease of gear swap later since you can just throw the truck on a lift when it comes time.

I think I've pretty much made the decision to do just that. I'm going to bring brake shoes, hardware, wheel cylinders, axle bearings and seals home with me this weekend. So I'll pull the axle shafts out and check the brakes over. If it all looks good I'll just bring the parts back to the shop and return it all, but if there are problems I'll have the parts on hand. I might as well paint it too. Next weekend I'll install it. I'm still yet to see if it's got a gov lock or not, obviously I'll know when I pull the cover.

 

[Frankenchevy]

If I'd of known a couple days ago I would have been all over that, and I agree all the camper specials I've been around had 4.10's. This differential is in pretty good shape it seems and I can always use the springs off of it. I don't remember where you are at I'll shoot you a quick PM and we will see how close we are. Do you know what you'd want for the rear end?

Right, and from what I have gathered from Nick, and my local tranny guy Dan, that's about right. The biggest thing that kills overdrive as far as towing is if there is enough load to cause it to slip.

However and I mean no offence to anyone but this in not flatlandia here. There and mountain passes and where there aren't mountain passes there are ridges and hills. One example I like to give is coming back from west of the tri-cities then just after Yakima there are three ridges that I have to pull the highest is Manastash ridge at a crest of 2,600 feet the grade is steeper then the actual mountain pass we'll get to in a moment. So there are three ridges and then before getting to Snoqualmie pass which is a longer but more gentle climb there's about 40 miles of relatively flat road and I might cautiously trust overdrive on that 40 miles. But that just gives a little bit of info about the land out here. It's just not very flat so overdrive while towing would be of very limited use I would think.

I'm not saying no to the use of overdrive I'm just doubtful there would be a lot of use for it out here.

Same here. About a half hour of driving can yield 2-3,000’ of elevation gain. Makes towing and carb tuning a little more interesting.

 

[SirRobyn0]

Well i brought everything home with me to tear into the differential hopefully tomorrow. I don't have a covered area to work at until I move into the new place next month so this is weather dependant. But I'm going to drag it out of my small utility trailer and set it up on the back of my flat bed trailer. That will be my work space. I've got my air compressor and I can fire up my generator if I need to run it. I've got bearings, seals, shoes, wheel cylinders, and hardware. So I can do up the brakes real good. And I've got paint as well so I can make the whole unit look real nice after a good cleaning.

@SquareRoot you remember back when I was doing the intake and dealing with fouled plugs, we were figuring the jobs by number of beers? Could you please give me a beer estimate on this job.

 

[SquareRoot]

6 pack if clear sky's. 18 pack if rain. I forget where you're at? My time in Washington State was rain 80% of the time. Plan accordingly.

 

[SirRobyn0]

That sounds about right Mike Lol. It's clear and sunny, I'm in the foot hills on the wet side so we get penty of rain. My plan was and still is if it gets rainy call off the work.

Well I haven't made much progress. It took me me bloody forever to get the differential out of my little utility trailer and up on my big flatbed trailer but it's do now. I'm taking a quick lunch break and having a cider with it so I'll be ready to start the actual work this afternoon.

Here it is all jigged up and ready to be worked on. For bonus points you can see my square in the background.

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So I got the thing up there by using a piece of diamond plate for a ramp and a heavy 6K ratchet strap for a come a long. There's so many things I don't have now. If I had my engine hoist this would have been much easier. But it's gone now. My ex is preventing me from getting any more of my stuff and I have basically decided I just want to move on and not fight with her. Then I start getting ready to work. I'm basically working in a field, so I get my air compressor out and my generator out and then realize I don't have an air hose. So here in a little bit I'm going to look though what I do have and see if I stashed it somewhere. If not I'll have to decide if I'm doing it by hand or if I'm running into town.

I'm sure there will be a lot more obsiticals like that in the near future but I'm just going to the best I can to move forward.

More later this evening or tonight after I get things opened up.

 

[SirRobyn0]

Afternoon break time. Its gone well so far. I got the cover off and cleaned everything up inside. There was some build up but not to bad. A little bit if fine metal on the magnet but nothing unexpected.

I believe it's and open carrier as in not a gov loc. Which is fine with me. I decided way back when I was first considering this that I'd be fine with either. A gov loc would be great for a little added traction, but an open carrier is one less thing to break. So does someone that knows these rear ends better than me like @Ricko1966 or anyone else want to confirm. I see spiders though the little windows so I assume it's an open diff.

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[Ricko1966]

Rotate it and look,4 spider gears=open. 3 spider gears = gov lock. The pics I'm having trouble with.

 

[SirRobyn0]

@Ricko1966. I've already closed her up and I'm not planning to pop the cover again, but if do I look. Otherwise I guess I'll know when I drive it.

 

[SirRobyn0]

Ok progress. I've got one the drivers side brake done. As it turns out that side had a pretty good amount of 80w90 slung around inside the brakes, so getting that apart and cleaned up was a pretty nasty job.

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[SirRobyn0]

Took almost an entire can of brake clean to get the drum cleaned up. Bearing still looked really good so I reused those and installed a new seal. Im doing this at home so I'm not turning the drums, which should be just fine as long as that aren't warped.

The edges on the drum weren't to bad but I did go over the surface with some of that dark red emery cloth stuff.

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[SirRobyn0]

Also took quite a bit of time to get backing plate cleaned up. I brought home 4 cans of brake clean and im down to just one left.
I guess i didn't take a picture of the backing plate when it was nasty but here it is all cleaned up with a new wheel cylinder installed. And a little antiseize on the contact points.

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Then I cleaned and lubricated the adjuster and went to reassemble. This is when I open up the hardware kit and find someone had taken about half of the hardware out. Grrr. So the springs and everything were actually in really good shape probably because they were preserved in 80W90. So more cleaner and more rags to get the hardware cleaned up so I could reuse it. Which really is fine like I said it was still in good shape it just would have been nice just install the new hardware vs more cleanup.

Looks pretty good I think

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I did get the drum on and the axle installed so this side is done, other than adjusting the shoes

 

[SirRobyn0]

For parts, I managed to find ACDelco wheel cylinders. And ACDelco axle seals. The shoes are DEF brand which i don't think is available retail, but I've used then and bunch and they are pretty good.

So tomorrow it'll be doing the otherside. Then cleaning up the actual axle housing and hopefully a coat of paint!