Rebuilding rear axle DIY?

[Dlefler]

No doubt they won't move the pinion out. I'm guessing the yoke has been changed at some point with the wrong one to account for the gap. Either way the yoke butts up against the outer bearing which isn't a press fit onto the pinion. If the inner bearing wore that much (3/16?) The OP would have been up against the crush collar and the pinion would still have a ton of slop in it and I'm sure he would have noticed that. At that point the back of the pinion would be rubbing on race/housing. That would be a hard noise to ignore.

Also If the pinion moved out 3/16", the gears will be knife edged and junk anyway.

Thats why I'd inspect the diff before loading the parts cannon. I've been setting diffs up for years, I've never seen a pinion launch itself out without catastrophic failure to go along with it..

You are thinking that somebody changed out the yoke? That very well could be as everything on this truck has changed and hacked. Is it safe to drive it like this? I don't hear noise or vibration but then again this truck is super loud.

 

[TotalyHucked]

If you're very mechanically inclined, you can do it. If not, it's probably best left to pros. I've been wrenching my whole life and just did my first axle earlier this year, took me 2.5 months to get it right and 2 sets of gears (granted, life got in the way. It was probably a solid 5 weeks of working on it after work and weekends though). My best advice if you're gonna tackle it, buy quality parts. Granted if you're just doing bearings and seals, that's a whole lot easier than doing a gear change like I did. Go slowly on disassembly, make notes of everything, keep track of where your shims were and it *should* go back together pretty easily. You still need to run a pattern though to make sure it was right before it started having issues, you may have to adjust some shims. Get 2 sets of bearings and make a set of "setup" bearings for this. There's plenty of YouTube videos for doing these 10-bolts

 

[Dlefler]

If you're very mechanically inclined, you can do it. If not, it's probably best left to pros. I've been wrenching my whole life and just did my first axle earlier this year, took me 2.5 months to get it right and 2 sets of gears (granted, life got in the way. It was probably a solid 5 weeks of working on it after work and weekends though). My best advice if you're gonna tackle it, buy quality parts. Granted if you're just doing bearings and seals, that's a whole lot easier than doing a gear change like I did. Go slowly on disassembly, make notes of everything, keep track of where your shims were and it *should* go back together pretty easily. You still need to run a pattern though to make sure it was right before it started having issues, you may have to adjust some shims. Get 2 sets of bearings and make a set of "setup" bearings for this. There's plenty of YouTube videos for doing these 10-bolts

Thank you