Tight Quarters

[JRBAMATEX]

I Changed the output shaft seal on the front rear axle and the input shaft seal on the last rear axle yesterday. The second or last axle went pretty smooth. I thought it would be the more difficult of the two. Negative.... The front rear was a challenge. The nut on the pinion shaft that holds the flange on was immovable under my own power. Also as you can imagine the quarters are pretty tight under there and do not offer much room for a big cheater bar. So I resorted to putting a 20 ton bottle jack under the handle of my 3/4" drive ratchet and jacking it up. There was only a handful of things that could happen. Either the ratchet explodes and sends shrapnel everywhere including into me or the truck comes off the ground or the nut lets go. The nut gave. Reluctantly, but it did give. Then I broke my seal puller trying to get the old seal out. So I had to take the seal housing off. Then put it all back together. Should have taken a few hours. Took most of the day. I am so soar! from working in that little space. I climbed out and the wife says "You're filthy!" Oh... you think?

Side note: Made a shifter boot for the T-Case lever today. Need to make a mounting plate to secure it to the tunnel but the boot turned out real nice. See pic below.

 

[Recovry4x4]

Food for thought. If you want to work on the back of that fwd rear axle, jack up the aft axle as high as you can and set it up on jack stands. You'll be surprised at how much access that gets you.

 

[rizzo]

Food for thought. If you want to work on the back of that fwd rear axle, jack up the aft axle as high as you can and set it up on jack stands. You'll be surprised at how much access that gets you.

I was gonna try and do that to get the pig out and put a locker in. Is there enough room?

 

[Recovry4x4]

Man, I've never tried to go that far. I don't think so Sir. There might be just enough room but maneuvering that pig in there might take a musclebound crackhead to manipulate it.

 

[rizzo]

Man, I've never tried to go that far. I don't think so Sir. There might be just enough room but maneuvering that pig in there might take a musclebound crackhead to manipulate it.

well considering it only takes 8 bolts to get the box off that will probably be the way to go.

 

[Recovry4x4]

Yeah, I agree on that one. If it were te M108 I wouldn't know wat to say.