First off, thanks to all you guys that responded with info, advice,
and encouragement. When I get to the 'epilogue' stage of this
project, I promise I'll summarize all the accumulated wisdom and
post it to the list.
Andy Mace, Chris Kantarjiev, Larry Snyder, Richard George, Mike G.,
Kevin Spooner, John Lye: you guys are the greatest. You (and others)
have all done a lot to make owning this car a lot less painful (!) than
it could have been.
So... last night I split the diff case and took a quick peek. The first
clue that something was amiss was the castle nut on the pinion gear.
(pls excuse me if I don't know the appropriate terms for these parts)
It is supposed to have some torque value as I recall. The nut was being
held on only by the cotter pin, and was probably a good full turn away
from even being finger tight. When I took the nut off and pulled the
flange out, the pinion could be wiggled about 1/4" side to side. (that
doesn't seem right!) The axle shaft bearings felt ok. The gear teeth
looked ok, too. The crown wheel has some chips on the outside, but not
near the gear teeth.
So, doctors, will the patient survive? Monday (payday) I figured on
taking it to a local diff rebuild place to have them look at it.
(oh yeah, there was no gasket at all between the case halves, everything
had copious amounts of RTV everywhere) The options are: $275 for
a junkyard diff or ??? for a rebuild. TRF has about 8 months supply of
crown and pinion sets, then there aren't any more. So I'm debating about
buying a set for stash no matter what happens. Last year, the set was
$150, now they are $230. Hmm.
- Chris
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