Looking for a "how to" - Front diff main housing seal replacement

It’s what I could afford & seemed like a good starting place….

 

Yep, actually everything if you don't have it.



Should have the bracket for the crossmember if not, that too.

 

ok. Thank you. I do have the B. The diagram made it look like it was in a different place. Didn’t make sense. Now it does thanks to your pic.

 

Whelp, here it is. I forgot to take the pic before I primered. There’s one 4 inch spot on the bottom where it came out looking like it should (my neighbor put it as “overlapping nickels”). No idea how it happened though. Mostly it was a lot of mumbling & some unladylike words. & I clogged it three times…. Glad it’s done though. It was bugging me.
Thank you!

 

Have to say, that's really great!

For the next one (if you need to do another such job) do a sort of L to both wrap the face and either the top or bottom.

 

Thank you!
Not quite following…. Do you mean at the corners?

 

An L; one part on the side that needs patching and either the bend over the top or the bottom -



Plenty of people have done it the way you did so no worries there, though maybe a longer piece (with holes drilled in the center) to cover a larger surface.

These frames are already heat treated so in my own head I'd tell myself to keep the heat between the ends of the plates as far as I can. Not that it matters too much since a ton of people weld sliders and other things on their frames.

 

Gotcha!

So if I had done this, I would have had to put the L over the original frame weld because getting at the top was not happening. This is ok?

Also, when you put “holes drilled in the center”, this would be why? (Helps me to understand what a step has to do with what I'm looking to accomplish.)

 

Lots of good videos on welding out there these days watch some get an idea what should happen.

Your very brave posting that picture.

Good Luck!!

 

I am 99.9994% sure (if it was 104% it'd be a stupid question) I already know the answer, however.... If I needed to loosen the 1st cat to exhaust manifold nuts I would have to replace the gasket, correct? I am realizing maybe I should have waited to cinch those up after I had the rest of the exhaust assembled.

 

If you have not started the truck or over tighten things and crushed the gasket .

You might be fine. Your going to be looking it the gasket so it is your call.

If you have a new gasket in hand it never hurts to replace it just in case.

 

Found it!
Hard to see - nasty ol’ oil cooler hose clamp. Well, hopefully that’s it…. Or rather, the only one….

 

As stated earlier in my post, not that it matters as many have done the same repair you have.

But the holes would've been in the event that the plate covered a large surface area (including an undamaged part of your frame).

Having holes or slots notched out would give you another area to attach your 'repair' to the frame. Filling it with a weld metal is called a plug weld.

 

But But You were so sure it was gear oil!!

 

Wellll…. Still not sure it’s the only leak. However, I was spewing gear oil out of that cv seal for quite some time before I finally got it right. It’s not hard to end up with everything smelling like gear oil. How many times have I swiped at something to give it a whiff & then same thing somewhere else & of course it’s going to smell like gear oil cuz you can’t get that stench off your fingers just by wiping them off.
Anyway, I did state earlier I had my eye on the oil cooler cuz it looked “too shiny”. Can’t believe I didn’t suspect that clamp & on the other hand, that it hadn’t gone before this. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to remove it, but it pretty much disintegrated.
Weirdness is I was only down 1/2 pint of oil.
But yes, I was pretty darn sure it was gear oil….
Glad I was wrong. I’ll still reclean & keep an eye or two on everything.

 

I could not help myself I really was just teasing you.

When you have even a small gear oil leak even antifreeze would smell like gear oil.

Maybe if you had just split your front differential you might have had a leak in that area for what ever reason.

Hope the exhaust job worked out well.

 

I did get that you were teasin.

Oh, plus there weren’t any visible drips on the cooler.

 

Reviving this rather than start yet another thread. Has to do with the front dif breather or breathers in general.
Since I found the leak, I have not yet taken on the task of swapping out the hoses that go from the bracket to the front dif & actuator. Ideally that would be a spring project.
1. Could one tell if a hose was blocked by removing the fill plug & the breather, then applying vacuum to the hose? Theory being that the hose would not hold vacuum. Or better yet, do it with & without the fill plug just in case the hose itself is damaged?
2. Could a blocked hose (or breather) cause a cv axle seal to leak? Or does a blocked breather hose (or breather) typically have a different result?

 

For #1, I think the easier route would be to just pull the hose. If you have that bracket still on the diff (I removed mine ), then it should be easy to remove. One end has the breather and the other end of the hard line of the bracket is attached to the transfer case by a much smaller hose. Remove the longer side. Once removed, put some air through it and verify it's not blocked or just replace the thing or extend the hose up to the engine bay. The smaller diameter tube is for the actuator breather. Shouldn't need to mess with that one.




For #2, I can't speak from experience but I'd imagine it would have the same result as what you'd see with the rear axle.

 

Right. I could have been more specific. I did do the hoses from the bracket to the bay. What had come up earlier in the thread was the hoses from the bracket to the dif & actuator. @timmah had suggested they be done & the best way was to drop the dif a little & clean up other stuff whilst in there. So that’s why I was referring to it as a spring thing. However, if there was a way to tell if they were compromised before something happened, I was just throwing this out there as to whether this may be a way to check….