I work at Sears automotive so I figured I'd just get all the stuff done to the car that's needed for the 2600 mile trip I'm about to take. New tires, coolant flush/exchange, left rear axle seal, pinion seal. When they did the pinion seal they didn't replace the crush collar. I made a big deal about it but the kid I work with swore up and down that everything is fine and it's not the kind of collar I'm thinking of. So hypothetically how long would I have before the bearings in the rear start to go? I've been calling dealers all morning trying to get as much information as I can.

Unless you have a Dana rear in your car he's 100% wrong. Crush collars are one time use. If you replace the pinion seal you MUST replace the crush collar. Now the seal has to come back out and get ruined so the job can be done properly. You need to set the drag on the pinion bearings again as well, about 5 in/lbs with used bearings. I would not pay for it either. If he can't do it get your money back and have a shop that does rears a lot do it.

I was pretty sure that's what was going to be said. Why are the dealers telling me that it's not something to be worried about?

Because dealers probably want you to come back.

That would be understandable if I had taken it to a dealer. Even then it would be there **** up and they would be paying for it.

I've done a ton of pinion seals and not replaced the crush collar. Never had a problem. It will be fine if he did it right.

Maybe I'm missing something here as rear ends aren't my area of expertise, but why would you replace the crush sleeve if your just replacing the seal? I could see if you took the entire rear end apart and removed the pinion, but if you just pop the seal out of the front of the diff, there shouldn't be any need to replace the crush sleeve? The crush sleeve is just a spacer to set the pinion depth and hold the pinion bearing in place? Right?

Ive replaced 100's of pinian seals and never replaced the crush collar. Whats why you mark the nut onto the pinian, and count the threads, take it off, replace the seal, put the yoke back on, put the nut back on and line the marks up. Its easy, If you had to replace the crush collar, why does it only pay .9 of a hour to replace a pinian seal? It would have 5 hours to rebuild the rear end.

As 86camaro383 said, as long as you don't overtighten the nut it will be fine. Changing the crush sleeve means pulling the whole thing apart. Not something you want to be doing unless you have to (and it's not something most shops would do properly if they did).

The spacer has nothing to do with pinion depth. It is only there to create tension in the pinion shaft when the nut is tightened. If the spacer was not in there then the nut would have very little preload on it and there would be no tension in the shaft. It takes about 300 foot pounds of torque on the nut to start to crush the spacer. After that it takes about 200 to 250 to keep crushing it. When you replace the pinion seal you don't need to replace the spacer as long as you don't go past 150 foot pounds of torque on the nut. This is enough to create some tension in the shaft, but not enough to increase the pinion bearing preload. If the nut was overtightened then it would increase the bearing preload and could cause the pinion bearings to overheat. If the guy used a 1/2 inch impact wrench to tighten the nut then it's probably fine.

2 things that you should know. Did he smear some sealant into the splines of the yoke before he put it back on? If not then oil can seap out through the splines and you have another oil leak. Did he use some red Locktite on the threads before he put the nut back on? If not the the nut could work it's way loose later and cause some problems with the bearings and gears.

Agreed

When you torque down the pinion nut to crush the sleeve, you normally use a large breaker bar and need to hold the yoke to keep it from turning. There's a lot of torque required to crush the sleeve.

Putting an impact onto the nut to tighten it up after replacing the seal won't crush the sleeve unless you're using a huge impact gun and it will provide enough force for a bearing preload.

I wouldn't worry about it.