Dana 35 rev A vs. rev C, what to do?

[Drich]

Have been battling a front end noise for too long.

Picked up a front carrier from the junkyard. I think it came out of a 2000 Mercury Mountaineer (Explorer look alike) with 150k miles. (edit: not sure of source vehicle) Could be an already rebuilt front end.

Pulled the carrier from my 2011 Ranger (60k miles). Things are a little different for rev. C. The outer bearings in the carrier are bearings in the junkyard carrier, they are tapered races in the original. The spider gears in the junkyard diff are stout, the 2011 look to have a very wide gap. Housings appear identical. CV axles appear to interchange.

My 2011 carrier's pinion bearing is toast. The 2011 ring gears aren't wearing great, the junkyard ring gear looks perfect.

What to do? Was thinking of just fixing the one wheel seal on the junkyard carrier and putting it in. Then completely rebuilding the 2011 over the winter.

Junkyard rev A with even wear on the ring gear and stout spider gears.

Rev. C with uneven or tapered ring gear teeth wear and well spaced teeth on the spider gear.

 

[dvdswan]

Was the mountaineer an AWD model or 4WD model?

 

[Drich]

Don't know. Was a 5.0. (wikipedia is saying it must have been AWD) Was an interchangeable part per their website. Looks to be same data as car-parts.com.

After looking at them a bit more did notice two differences. The middle shaft (whatever the correct name would be?) that is only located on the passenger side came with the junkyard carrier. The middle shafts are maybe a quarter inch different in length, and shaped different where the outer bearing/race would be. The rev. c designed for the race provides more surface area, and is the longer one. (Need to now research if the cv-axles interchange, they appear to.)

Also the vent tube on top of the carrier is located sort of off to the side of top on the rev.a. Shouldn't be a problem, I think.

 

[Drich]

Got things put back together. No surprises, yet. Noise is better, but still not gone. Now it's most noticeably coming from the rear pumpkin. Looks like I have an 8.8 rebuild in my future.

So far bad bearings have included:
front left hub assembly
front right hub assembly
the u-joint on the front driveshaft, cv joint not so great either
pinion bearing on front diff.