I have a small fluid leak from the drive shaft side of the differential. 9 bolt. 89 formula
I have a few questions..

1. Are the bearing and seal accessible from the driveshaft side without ripping apart the inside of the case?

2. Will the seal work on 9 and 10 bolts.. or are they different parts? Can you even buy a 9 bolt seal anymore?

3. How do I tell if that bearing is worn enough to bother replacing?

Hopiing to just drop the shaft and replace the seal...

I just replaced the cover. Didn't see and chips or debris. It had a very old gasket on it.

Looking for advice, or a link to a guide.
Floyd

 

Seal your looking for is a 7457n. Timken #. The way that yoke and outer bearing fit, they could be stuck together real good. Only 1 way to find out.

 

Incorrect info...

 

Jack up car, use stands or lift, remove DS, remove yoke, remove seal.
Install new seal (i like to remove bearing and use a solid pinion spacer), install yoke, install new pinion nut, install ds and let car back down.
Take car out and do mad 11s with it..
step 7, have a beer and enjoy..

 

What's a solid pinion spacer?

 

You don't want to get into the solid spacer. This requires a complete rear end disassembly to set the pinion bearing preload. All you need to do is replace the seal.

I'll add these tips. You will need to torque the new pinion nut to about 125 to 150 foot pounds. I always use red Locktite on the threads to help keep the nut from backing off. You will probably find some sealer in the yoke splines when you remove it. Be sure to clean this out and use some new sealer before you install it. Oil can seap through the splines if you don't seal them. RTV or thread sealer will work fine.

 

Have to ask a few questions to go along with this, as axles are not my strong point.

So the 9 bolt uses a crush sleeve from the factory?

Either way (reusing crush sleeve, replacing crush sleeve, or replace with a solid spacer...does he not need to take a rotating torque reading to know how much to re-tighten the pinion nut?

 

The tests that I have done show that the crush spacer doesn't start to crush again until you get to about 200 foot pounds of torque on the nut. I have found that around 125 to 150 foot pounds will restore the bearing preload pretty close to what it was and the nut is still tight enough to hold everything in place. If you wanted to disassemble the rear end to check the bearing preload then that would be fine, but you need to do this before removing the pinion nut so that you can measure the preload before and after so that it is set the same.

 

Thanks big gear head. You are always on the spot with answers to these things. It's like being back in shop class!

I sort of forgot for a moment that we were talking about a salisbury style axle, and not a banjo. I'm picturing setting up the pig on the bench...duh!

 

Like you said, he only needs a seal.

Its super easy to use a solid spacer on a rear that's already been setup.