Hardrock off-road April trip

Ready as I'm gonna get. Pre-reminder: don't forget to throw that brake stuff in the truck for me. I'll hit you again Friday or Saturday.

 

Well, doing rear gears Monday and Tuesday. Driving up to see time for a cab mount chop on Wednesday, then front gears and axles on Thursday Friday. Work Saturday.

Hope I can get it all done!

 

That's a hell of a week. Are you setting up the gears yourself or are you installing already built third members?

 

3rd member and front Diff are already assembled. Rear should be easy.

Disconnect drive shaft, drain Diff, unbolt and pull axles out 5-6 inches, pull old 3rd out, then reverse.

Front is a little more involved

 

Good stuff. @Taco No Baka and I did the exact same thing last year sometime on a second gen. The rear is easy as pie but the front is definitely more involved. We were able to get it all done in a day though. It's a straightforward process, just very time consuming

 

Did you have to replace axle seals? I should be ok if I'm careful right?

 

No, not on either axle but I think one of the front axle seals started leaking shortly after the swap. I think it was just a fluke though

 

OK cool. Gonna start on it in the morning.

 

See you there!

 

Haha, yeah, there were three of us so that sort of took a lot of the PITA out of it. The front was definitely the worst. We ended up having to pull the CVs out of the diff without removing them from the hubs. It was @Sholden223 's truck we were working on and he has a DB lift so I don't know if it was easier or harder than a factory config, although the long spindles probably gave us a little more play to get the axles out than the shorter factory ones. I'll also add that Todd was being really manly that day. He laid on the creeper and I set the front diff assembly on his chest and he rolled under the truck and bench pressed it up in there while Spencer and I secured it. He also did the same thing with the rear 3rd member.



Todd needs to fab up an axle press for you 2nd & 3rd Gen guys that bolts to the wheel studs and has a big ol' bolt in the middle to press the stupid stub axle out of the hub.

The rear axle was kinda interesting too. Again it was a lot easier with three of us. Spencer and I had to pull the axles out and hold them (the brake lines wanted to pull them back in far enough that they were still just barely engeged in the 3rd) while Todd was removing the old 3rd and the process was repeated when putting the new third in. I could definitely see that doing it by yourself, while not impossible by any means, would be a lot more frustrating.

 

A cool trick with the rear someone showed me is to put a deep socket between the brake drum and axle tube on the rear to keep it from pulling back in

 

That would have been similar to my plan. I would have wedged it with a wedge of wood.

 

I am utterly unsurprised...seems my cousin is a nogo. His Chevy did what Chevys do and took a shit on him so he won't be going.

BTW, @allenfab , what size wheels are those dirty-5s mounted on and how much do you want for them?

 

Tires/Wheels
35x12.50R15 Mickey Thompson MTZ's
15x8 3.75" backspace Summit Racing D-window black steel wheels

took me one click

 

However, it didn't tell you how much he wants to sell them for. Thanks though.

 

tis true

 

$400 for the four best ones. I am keeping the fifth one as a spare still. I will have to get tread depths in a few

 

Cool. I'll pass it on followed by the tread depth when you get it. Thanks.

 

Here you go. Tread depths and pics of the best and worst ones

 

Awesome. Thanks, Todd. I'll let ya know what he wants to do.