Joy to the world I have the axle leak now as well. Planning to pick up the rolling crowbar tomorrow and the seals Monday at the stealership. A friend and I did my gears and pulling the axles was part of the process. Not too hard just doing this with out a lift could be interesting.

 

I did this a week ago. Followed all the instructions posted by Quinten went really good! not hard at all no leaks yet! painted my diff cover when i had it off too!

 

yep it was actually pretty easy. Took me like 5 hours with 4 of those waiting on the wife to get back from the store with brake cleaner and groceries.

 

hahaha

 

My buddy works at the Ford dealer and he said that often the bearing wears a groove into the axels and they aren't cheap to replace so do your seals asap if they are leaking.

 

Great write up just as everyone else has already said. I did the drivers side seal on my '04 FX4 2 years ago with no problems. Yesterday I went to replace the passenger side seal and it has fought me tooth and nail the whole way and it still isn't back together! If i didn't have the confidence from doing the first seal I may have looked this up first and this thread would have saved me. I have a limited slip, and the clutch pack made it difficult to remove the C clip, but with a friend's help we got it. Got the axle out and a simple claw hammer removed the old seal in about 20 seconds. Now, putting it all back together has been nothing but headaches!!! Slid the axle in with the same friend holding the gear and clutch pack in place, put C clip in and pull axle out. Friend goes home and I try getting the spider gears back in place. This is what would have been useful with this article, never though about not removing the spider gears. The spider gears won't go back into place. The axle won't pull out enough to even get the pinion shaft back in place. Clutch pack is all lined up and we have tried this many times with no luck. There just isn't enough movement! This isn't my first experience working on a rear axle, replaced a diff in a ranger, bearings and seals in ranger, and the driver's side seal in this axle and never had a problem. Anyone have any ideas for me? Both my friend and I are mechanically inclined and work on vehicles a lot and we are both stumped.

Sorry for the long first post

'04 FX4 ProComp MT 33x12.50x17 on Eagle Alloy rims otherwise stock

 

did both seals in my F150......took a couple hours, I just used a claw hammer on the seals...worked great.

 

I had trouble with that when I did my seal on my 03. The spider gears are held in position in the carrier by that z shaped spring but it is too hard to compress by hand. I fought with that forever and finally had a friend turn one of the tires while a shoved everything into the carrier and sort of rolled it into all into place. Good luck. I was pissed it took me so long to do an axel seal.

 

I don't have the z shaped spring but I have worked with one of them years ago and no problems. Instead mine uses to conceived washer to apply spring pressure. I still don't have this thing back together. I had some help from my Uncle who's a mechanic today and we determined it just isn't gonna go. Took the whole carrier assembly out and it's going to Fleetpride to get put back together first thing Monday morning. Then I will be able to follow this guide and leave the spider gears in place, just pull the pin out, slide the axles in, put C clip on pull them out and put the center pin back in, at least I hope it goes that easy!

 

For the record, DO NOT spin the spider gears out under any circumstance!!! I finally got my truck back together last night after having to pay to have the spider gears reinstalled in the differential. A 2 hour job to replace an axle seal turned into a week long project that caused me lots of stress!

 

Thanks for the great how to wright up.
My 03 KR has 170k on it, was in the process of new rotors, pads ect, all the way around, then I seen this how to and decided to change the bearings and seals why is was all apart, Do a lot of towing in the winter so I figured before they go on one of the coldest days in the middle of winter why not get r done.

Thanks again.....

 

Thanks Quintin, just finished replacing my bearing and your info was very helpful. If it weren't for getting bad info from the dealer, it would have taken a few hours. Instead, after several trips to the parts store to replace wrong parts, it took me about 6 hours. One tip i can give is for removing the bolt holding the pinion shaft in place. i could not get my ratchet in there so i use a wobble extension and it worked fine. Also do net use the syphoning method to fill up the dif. I 'm trying that and it is taking a long time.

 

Good write up Quintin.
This is the same for procedure for my 99 and i used it to to replace just one seal.

The only issue i had was parts. My axle is a 9.75 as shown by the tag but the seal was too big, the seal for the 8.8 was correct. The parts were from autozone and advanceauto not the dealer.

 

great write up my friend. just like when i did my 5 lug on my mustang 8.8.

i work at advance and we
-rent slid hammers
-get many confused customers that have 9.75 rear ends that take 8.8 size stuff

some of the 9 an 3/4 rears have 8.8 components.

 

First off, Thank you Quintin for the post. I found it extremely helpful. I did notice, however, that you put 75W-140 gear oil in. I was reading in the Owner's Guide and they say to put in 75W-90 full synthetic. I am not sure what your reason for the heavy oil was, but I thought I would put that out there.