Cleaning the rear end

In what seemed like a near eternity between the last time I was able to work on Ike, I finally got the rear axle up on the bench to start cleaning it up. After scraping about a pound of grease and dirt from the differential housing and axle tubes, I opened up the differential cover. After talking to a local driveline shop, I decided that at least the rear end would be well within my ability level to get going again. The guy basically said that when I open the thing up, it will be pretty obvious if I need to do anything serious to it and/or get it to a shop. Luckily, the gears inside look fantastic. There aren’t any signs of abnormal wear, and no broken gear teeth or obvious signs of rust on the inside. I was also pretty happy that the ratio tag was also intact under all the crap that had built up around the differential cover.

I was also lucky enough to borrow a hub puller from my father in law. Unfortunately, once I pulled the dust cap, I found that I didn’t have a socket the right size to pull it. Back when I was removing the transfer case, I had to purchase a socket that was between my two largest SAE sockets. At first, I had purchased one that was too big for the nut on the end of the first gear. Against my better judgement, I returned the socket that was too large and got the one that was slightly smaller. Come to find out, that just happens to be the but size on the end of the rear axle.

Now that I have majority of the dirt and grime removed from the axle, I’ll get it ready for sandblasting. Hopefully I’ll have some good weather next week to get the axle blasted and ready for some more disassembly. I’d love to get far enough along on the rear axle to start pulling apart the front one. The front will be a far more laborious process since there are far more parts to it. After I have two good axles down to the metal. I’ll get em prepped and painting, new brake pieces put on, and new brake lines.

That should take me through the end of the summer. Hopefully around that time I’ll actually get around to getting the frame blasted and repaired, and then I can put the suspension back together. I should probably also start thinking about getting some new wheels and tubes for the tires.