Any of you guys had any luck bringing a diff to a machine shop and have it cleaned up? Does this hurt the bearing races? Is it worth it? What did you have done? Can they bring it down to bare metal so it is ready for paint? Is it worth messing with axle shafts too? Thx in advance.

 

If it gets to that point, you'll be replacing all the bearing races anyway. No need to worry about them.

I get them sandblasted, tubes welded up, lower control arm relocation brackets installed, and powder-coated.

 

What I'm after is to have someone clean them up so I can paint. Basically don't want to do all that dirty work, very time consuming and can't do it as well as they can anyway. But don't really want to replace bearing races - shouldn't they be matched with new bearings?

 

It probably negates your lack of wanting to do it, (and I completely don’t blame you lol) but a wire wheel can do a nice cleanup on these in prep for a finish paint. A friend did one years back and I was quite impressed with how well it looked after.

 

well, made a few phone calls and know one seems to have a hot tank that big. one place wants $1200 to put in new bearings/races and put it back together so everything is set up right.