After spending last night and this morning fixing my emission problems and overheating issues I took the truck for a test drive. Heard a bad noise from the left rear-thought it was a tire. Started to rotate tires to isolate the problem and found the left axle had about 1/2" play-Uh-Oh. Rear gear was snapped in half-WTF?? Can you buy this in a whole new "chunk", because when it fell out, all of the shims and bearing and everything else fell out of order. I cannot put this back together with just a new gear. Where do i start looking. Thanks in advance.

 

For clarification-3.55, 8.8"
It is the housing that holds the small gears that split it half, the debris chewed up the gears.

 

It may be simpler to just find a used replacement rear axle and swap out the whole works. When things went BOOM, it may have taken out or damaged more that what can be readily seen in the basic inspection. A rear diff rebuild is something that should be done by a mechanic with training/experience in that area. a basic rear axle swap can be acomplished in the driveway by a competent shade-tree mechanic.

 

Agree with whitetrucks, I would look for a used axel and go from there.

Sorry about your bad luck.

 

Thanks guys, i knew i could not rebuild it. The only used one I've found so far has 200k on it.

 

If the price is right, it may not be a bad deal at 200k miles many rear axles outlast the rest of the truck with out a hint of a problem. for you this may or may not be the case, no telling what kind of treatment the part has seen over the years, but if it's intact at least you have a decent candidate for a rebuild, unlike that piece of scrap iron holding the ***** end of your ride off the ground right now.

Best of luck,let us know how things work out.

Joe

 

Here is where I get all of my used transmissions; http://car-part.com/

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Thanks all-found an axle w/ 78k miles on it. Finally found the time to put it in and all seems to be fine. Thanks for all of your help. Now on to my P0401, P0303, P0171 codes that have returned. I love my truck but I can't wait to get rid of it.

 

Glad you found an axel. Codes suck and good luck.