My car is in the shop. It was going to have the rear wheel bearings replaced. The mechanic took the diff cover off and saw that the planet gears are badly worn (ring and pinion appear fine). Can you just get replacement planet gears? Would he have to remove the diff to replace them? Should I get a replacement diff or axle.
The car is currently one wheel peel, so maybe it would be cost efeective to go LSD?


Cheers,
Mark.

 

i'll guess what you call planet gears we call spider gears here. if that's correct they casn be replaced but as you've already figured out this may be the time to upgrade to a posi.

 

Depending on what you want to do, it might even be a good time to upgrade to a new axle with posi AND rear disc brakes. 1le or better style. The brakes would require more work, but oh so much better than those drums. You definately at least want posi though, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. At least in my experience, lol.

 

Ain't it always the same - I just replaced the wheel cylinders, rear brake pipes (lines), shoes and hardware about two weeks ago!!

Mark.

 

UPDATE:
Beggars can't be choosers - I've found locally a diff unit, non LSD, but only £100 and it's a good one, so the first option the shop has is swapping out the planetaries (spider gears?), so as not to disturb the in-car ring and pinion mesh and backlash which is great. I picked it up tonight.

I spoke to one breakers yard who has about 3 or 4 axles, non LSD on drums, £200 each + VAT + shipping (quite cheap for over here) so that's worth my remembering if it all goes pear-shaped Another breakers had an LSD axle in - well he said it was an LSD because it came out of a T/A and all T/A's were LSD axles (we know different, don't we? ) he wanted £300+VAT+ shipping.

Cheers,
Mark.