rear end... pinion seal and bearing

[bhuff30]

The rear end started leaking, and slowly getting worse. I filled it up, and didn't think much of it until I started getting some nasty growling from it.
I crawled under the car, and noticed I can move the pinion side of the driveshaft very noticibly from side to side. Maybe up to a whole 1/8 of play in it.

My questions: How terrible of a job is it to replace the pinion bearing? Can the pinion bearing be removed and installed without a press (maybe using the wheel bearing tool)? Anyone have experience enough to guess if the gears will need to be replaced? At least that part won't cost to much, since everyone takes stock gears out.

I'm not looking forward to this job. I expect it will be easier just to pull the whole rear end in this case... which makes me want to price a used rear end.

 

[03ghoststang]

if you dont have gears done to your car yet then this would be a good time for it along with a bearing master kit which comes with everything. Just try and find a decent quote as far as install goes and you'll be set....


Or you can just replace teh pinion seal but my option would be to do i typed above

 

[bhuff30]

I'm not very interested in adding gears. That adds at least 200$ to the price tag, and I already have a toy... the 88 4cyl turbo. If I have to replace the gears, it will be another set of 3.27's, or 3.23's. whichever was the factory option. They only take me to 35ish in first, which is very reasonable. I just want to know what kind of mess I'm getting into with the pinion bearing. Certainly, I can set up the backlash on the gears.

 

[Mike97gt]

the only way to find out if the ring and pinion are ok is to take the cover off and see what they look like. If you see heat damage ( blueish purple marks) on the ring and pinion then it's junk.

you need all the bearings we know that... if you can get somebody to press the inner pinion bearing onto the pinion and the carrier bearings onto the carrier then you can do this at home. You will also have to install new races for the bearings too, if you reuse the old ones you will be doing this job again in a week.