My buddy has an 86 TA. I don't know if I'm dealing with a 9 bolt or 10 bolt yet. In either case, he ran it low on diff fluid for WAY too long, and smoked a bearing. A local shop pulled it apart and said that all of the bearings need to be replaced now. I'm assuming that's because the metallic particles have raped everything inside the housing. Anyway... I've had my 10 bolt apart only far enough to change alxes and differential. I've never messed with the pinion. I've never had more than the cover off of my 9 bolt. I assume that there's a bearing on the front of the pinion that I'm going to have to change, so it looks like I'll be getting my first lession in R&R of everything inside the housing. Does anybody have any info or pointers that would be helpful? I'm off to check the tech articles to see what I can learn about it, but I wanted to ask here to see if anybody had any additional info.

 

Nevermind. He decided to pay $500 for a shop to do it.

 

damn i'd like to be doing it for that. i'll answer in case this come back up in a search. the carrier bearings can be replaced either with a puller, short jaws-long screw and sometihng to push aginst on oppsite side of acarrier or wit ha press and bearing seperator. the small pinion bearing will fall off the larger you'd need press or puller again. you'd also need a new cruch sleeve and pinion nut and reset bearing preload. you ought ot be able to reuse same shim with no problems but pinion depth should be recheck as should back lash just to be sure