3rd member swap?

[thegipper]

It's greatly appreciated Rob! I re-torqued all of the cover nuts to 18 ft/lbs and sprayed the cover down with brake cleaner, if the leak comes back, I'll have to pull the 3rd member and reseal it (no biggie).

Thanks for the information!

 

[ajordan1975]

for piece of mind, replace the axle seals, and reseal the third. do it all now, and it'll save you from dealing w/ it later. it's all easy stuff and wont take long at all.

 

[thegipper]

Axle seals were recently replaced, I'll pull the abs sensor to make sure but I believe they are bone dry.

I'll know more about the 3rd member leak tomorrow.

 

[Renegade_Medic]

Ran into a similar dilemma with [MENTION=159759]Spunky1[/MENTION] and we elected to swap the entire axle. It is certainly easier said than done. It took us roughly 5 hours total to swap everything over, including brakes. Make sure you have a helper and also a ratchet strap, for moving the axle around to center the arms. And definitely pick a 100+ degree day like we did.

 

[thegipper]

I'll be pulling the axle housing on Friday. After I re-torqued the housing nuts and cleaned the housing, I don't see any more oil leaking. I bet it was just from the previous owner loosening up the nuts since he was going to originally part it out.

I'll keep an eye on it. I'll report on my success or failure Friday night, hopefully it goes smoothly (sprayed all the bolts/nuts down with RP).

 

[thegipper]

Change of plans. The donor housing has issues. The axle seals are failing, when I pulled the abs sensor, the gear was covered in oil. Bearings have some play in them also. Plus, the pan hard mount is bent (so is the panhard) and some of the other mounts (control arms) from the accident.

Looks like I'm just swapping the 3rd member, no biggie. My housing is a littlr more rusty but my bearings, seals are all good and it doesn't leak.

I've already pulled one shaft. I'll finish pulling the 3rd member tomorrow

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[Renegade_Medic]

Change of plans. The donor housing has issues. The axle seals are failing, when I pulled the abs sensor, the gear was covered in oil. Bearings have some play in them also. Plus, the pan hard mount is bent (so is the panhard) and some of the other mounts (control arms) from the accident.

Looks like I'm just swapping the 3rd member, no biggie. My housing is a littlr more rusty but my bearings, seals are all good and it doesn't leak.

I've already pulled one shaft. I'll finish pulling the 3rd member tomorrow

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Just a note: I have pulled probably over 20 of the axle shafts and all of them, except for one has had gear oil on the ABS ring, and they all have a little wobble in the backing plate, even after I had brand new bearing pressed in. Just my experience.

 

[thegipper]

Weird.

My 97 with 213k miles with original seals/bearings is still totally dry. This 99 I bought for parts had the seals replaced at least once at some point and the abs gear was covered in oil.

 

[RonJR]

It may well have a plugged differential breather. That will cause oil to be forced out no matter how good the seal is. You can replace the axle seals once a week and still have leaks if you don't open up the breather.

 

[thegipper]

Yeah it could just be the breather. Unfortunately, some of the other mounts (pan hard, control arms) have some damage from the accident. I'm just going to swap the 3rd member at this point.

My axle housing is in decent shape and my seals aren't leaking at all.

 

[thegipper]

Eaton true trac is out of the donor vehicle, piece of cake so far. Picture sucks, sorry

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[badattitude]

Cool, hope it looks OK, I haven't seen it since it was dropped off at the trans shop in like 2010ish. IIRC it's a nicely machined heavy chuck of steel.

FWIW - I believe the TrueTrac works best with conventional gear oil. I like synthetic in everything but because the TrueTrac is friction-based, conventional gear oil is suggested for best LSD performance. The directions that came with it said DO NOT USE SYNTHNETIC GEAR OIL.

Post more pics if you can

 

[thegipper]

The ring and pinion gears on your old truetrac look brand spanking new still Rob! I couldn't believe how good they looked.

This is the only other picture I took of it.https://photos.app.goo.gl/AIdW0yVAVPR66Ly93

Yes, I used conventional 80-90 gear oil per the instructions.

Here are my thoughts after doing the swap:

If you truck is rusty like mine, plan on shit breaking. I had one hub stud break off and one housing stud snap off. I had to use the torch several times on various things (broken stud, parking brake pins, bleeder screws etc).

Removing the 3rd member wasn't too bad (heavy AF) but putting the new one back in was the real challenge, especially by myself. Thankfully I ate my Wheaties that morning and wrestled that pig back in.

It took a lot longer than I had hoped (of course) because of the broken studs and I can't get the rear brakes to bleed. I think the bleeders in the rear are totally plugged up. I'm going to remove them and see if I can clean them out.

I took it for a test drive last night and everything appears to be good. No leaks or noises so that is good!