What to Look For When Buying Used Rear Axle?

[Roert42]

It’s kinda a pita to do, what’s the book time?

You are probably looking at a couple hundred bucks for bearings and seals. $500 labor doesn’t sound too bad, probably take most of a day if you don’t do it very often.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Yeah, to do it right is a pain in the rear, doing it right basically you have to reset the gears... Are you just wanting to do it since it's out? Was it gross when you got it? If it wasn't leaking and you aren't changing gear ratios just leave it, if you want to get crazy change the outer seals and maybe bearings and just call it good... My V8 explorer has been abused to the point of the spider gears stripping out and relying on the viscous clutch on the front output of the transfer case when I got it at 206k miles and was driven hard enough to bend the hitch down noticeably and completely destroy the transmission (every internal component was replaced, it was BAD, should have gotten a core...). I simply replaced the spider gears and shimmed up the L/S and added 2 quarts of gear oil (I kept forgetting to add the extra 1.5 quarts...) then drove it for 40k miles... I figured it'd give out a long time ago but it keeps going somehow... heck I've been using it to tow my 3500lb boat...

 

[scotts90ranger]

If the pinion seal is just leaking a little, mark the nut and pinion with a sharpie or paint pin, remove the pinion nut, pry the seal out, put a new seal in, put some loctite on the nut (probably red) then tighten back to where the marks meet and call it good.

 

[sgtsandman]

Replacing a lot of parts in the axle is always going to be very labor and time intensive with multiple installs and removals to get gear engagement and backlash right. $800 is not an unreasonable quote considering the job.