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Differential anyone? 3.7 or 3.9

lbc_newbie

Jedi Warrior
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After our outstanding drive yesterday, my tired differential gave it up this morning.....looking for a replacement. It would appear the yoke seal failed somewhere on our drive. It was pretty dry this morning. Started vibrating pretty good after about 7 miles of driving. Shut it down and towed it home. I'm finding that resolving all these problems will eventually lead to a pretty solid driver, so I decided to stop freakin' out whenever something else breaks. Leaving phase2 - ANGER, entering phase 3 - HOPE. Is this a 12 step program?

BTW - Sitting on the back deck getting a freakin' sunburn in February!! Gotta love El Nino!
 
So was Phase 1 "DENIAL"?

That's where you keep pouring more and more money and time into it thinking all the time - "right after this it's going to be a pretty good driver"...?

Oh - right - you're still there...

Don't worry, only 11 more steps.

:devilgrin:




Ed - seriously it's going to be fine, how many more major parts could you have to replace before it's all new??
 
Pull the pumpkin and check it out. It could be that the big yoke nut just came loose. Them are some hard gears and it takes a lot for them to just wear out and fail. You might fix it rather cheaply. Mine was originally a 3.9 and I changed out the gears to a higher ratio. If you need just the ring and pinion, I can sell those to you cheap that I removed from mine, but you might luck into a whole pumpkin for cheap and then you would not have to fool with setting the pinion depth and backlash and all. If you remove the pinion or ring, mark and hand onto any shims in there.
 
Great that it's running well... almost. You should have it reliable enough by April to run down the Portland Auto Jumble (all british swap meet), held the last Sunday of that month.
 
Yeah, the side bearings might just be a bit loose. I had a Dodge that ajusted the same way as these and it had a 1/4 slop in the carrier. Bearings still looked good so I tightened her up but figured it would whine real bad but was quiet as new gears. You might be able to save what you got and yes, sooner or later you'll run out of stuff to fix. In a few thousand miles, the first stuff you put on will start to break so no fear of getting out of practice. :jester:

If you use a National speedi sleeve, it's too long and a pain to get right. I learned the hard way and had to dremel the extra stuff off. It came out alright, but through me off as to why it would go all the way down. There is a shoulder the flange bottoms on before the sleeve is all the way on.
 
kellysguy said:
..... sooner or later you'll run out of stuff to fix. In a few thousand miles, the first stuff you put on will start to break so no fear of getting out of practice. :jester:

:lol:
Too funny, dude. The original problem when I bought this car was a blown differential. I've come to a complete circle.

Took the diff to BillM to check out.... we removed it from the housing, got all the metal shavings out of it from the axle. Bill thought the bearings looked great. The backlash was nice and tight. The wear I was seeing was on the shaft that the bearing was pressed onto, not the bearing itself. There wasn't any slop or play in the bearings and they turned freely and smooth. Bill also gave me two replacement axles. I've re-installed everything and the car runs perfect. No vibration whatsoever. How sweet! FIXED AGAIN!.....Oh, wait... Now I can get back to that fuse problem.....

Thanks to everyone who offered help and differentials. This forum is a great tool for us newbies.
 
lbc_newbie said:
Thanks to everyone who offered help and differentials. This forum is a great tool for us newbies.

You've been around the whole car, you're not a newbie anymore!
 
JPSmit said:
lbc_newbie said:
Thanks to everyone who offered help and differentials. This forum is a great tool for us newbies.

You've been around the whole car, you're not a newbie anymore!

Compared to some of the wizards out here, I am! It's been 1.5 years since I got the car with no LBC knowledge whatsoever. If I could have had this forum from the start (instead of 6 months into the rebuild), I could have saved a fortune and not made so many mistakes.
 
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