Leaking third member seal

[phattyduck]

If you do swap the whole housing/axle, make sure the ratio matches your front.

Good luck!

-Charlie

 

[Mark_BC]

It doesn't but I won't put it in 4 wheel unless I'm on a loose surface. I have a 4.3 front to put in later at some time.

 

[Mark_BC]

So my mechanic is reluctant to swap axles for me. He says it will take 4 hours. I'm wondering if I can just do it myself in one day. Scramble had some advice earlier. Never done it before. My biggest concern would be properly bleeding the brakes since I've never worked on those before. I have a floor jack I use to lift the truck up so I can use that to lift the axle in place, only a couple hundred pounds, I've picked half of it up before and walked it across the lawn and into and out of the back of the car so I'm familiar with manipulating it.

 

[Mark_BC]

I recall [MENTION=97483]Chuckles89[/MENTION] swapped out an axle pretty quick, does he have any advice on how to do this in one day without hiccups? I'm not going to open the thing up, this is a whole rear end swap, drum to drum to driveshaft.

 

[Chuckles89]

I recall [MENTION=97483]Chuckles89[/MENTION] swapped out an axle pretty quick, does he have any advice on how to do this in one day without hiccups? I'm not going to open the thing up, this is a whole rear end swap, drum to drum to driveshaft.

It's pretty easy

rough overview of steps:

1. jack up truck, place jack stands under frame
2. take off rear wheels/tires
3. unbolt driveshaft from diff
4. unbolt bottom shock mounts
5. remove brake line
6. remove e-brake cable
7. remove abs sensors and tuck out of the way
8. unbolt axle side of panhard bar
9. remove springs
10. unbolt all control arms at the axle
11. roll out axle with jack

then it's the opposite to put it back in

 

[Scramble]

Being up north, need to hit every nut & bolt with the penetrating oil of his choice. A week before the project & again the day before. And put it all back together with anti-seize.

 

[Mark_BC]

Actually amazingly all the bolts were easy to take off, and the lower shock mount too. Took me all day but I got the old one off and the new one on.

The only real pain was the brake lines, I got a crows foot 10 mm wrench from the local auto store which was pretty useless cause it was more like 10.5 mm, it rounded off some flare nuts. So I had to mix and match brake lines between the two axles depending on what I could take off. Luckily I could make a complete brake line set. Lost a lot of brake fluid to the lawn...

And also, why did the brainiacs at Toyota decide to put the ABS plug in the upper shock mount well, the most inaccessible place under the whole car?????

Tomorrow I'll bleed the brakes, change the diff fluid (there was only a small amount of goopy red stuff in it), adjust the brakes and tighten up all the bolts.

The old diff is def. bad, you can hear it grind when you turn it by hand.

 

[AntonioCm1983]

I agree the permatex The Right Stuff is great gasket maker i use it on my 3rd member also works super well no leaks after that you can get a flat style gasket though for these 3rd members

It looks like two leaks to me, around the 3rd member housing and the pinion seal.

When I swapped in a LSD 3rd member, I just cleaned up the housing/3rd member and used Permatex right stuff gasket maker. That stuffs works really well and dries very quickly.

If the pinion seal is leaking, I'm not sure what is all involved in replacing it. Someone on here should know though.