Adam, I just completed this job on my TR4A. It can not be done while in the
car but TR4A up through the 6's differentials can be removed with relative
ease. Depending upon the exhaust system that you have you may need to remove
some or mostly all of it up to the header pipe connection.
Once the diff is removed the pinion flange can be removed and the seal
replaced. I bought my seal and a speedy sleeve from NAPA and the numbers
are:
Speedy sleeve 15207 $29.26
Seal 99149 $15.92
They are Chicago Rawhide products and of good quality.
Once the diff is on the bench you need to lock up the flange somehow so that
the large nut can be loosened. Mine was not too difficult to do. The cotter
pin in mine was a piece of wire and was the original fitment and is even
shown as such in the parts manuals. That surprised me but I can understand
why since installing a new cotter pin was next to impossible because of how
deep it's inside the flange. I ended up using another piece of wire. I would
count the turns off of the nut and relative torque it took to remove and use
the same turns on and slightly more torque when tightening the nut again.
ISTR that the later diff's have a collapsible spacer while the older ones do
not. Perhaps someone else can clarify that point. Mine does not have a
collapsible spacer so I wasn't too concerned with torque values.
One thing that I will caution you about is that you need to remove the front
mount from the diff by removing 4 bolts that have star type lock washers
under them in order to adequately clean around the seal area. The lock
washers on my unit fell apart so I used regular lock washers when I put
everything back together. That was a mistake as the bolts then interfered
with the flange to driveshaft bolts. It made them stick out too far. Not
much clearance between those bolt heads. If you remove the mount and your
star washers fall apart, get new star washers and don't use regular lock
washers.
As Dave said the unit is heavy and it's awkward too. If you need to have the
frame mounts reinforced you may as well have someone do the diff work at the
same time or give you the diff to do while they have it out repairing /
strengthening the frame mounts. The seal takes about an hour to replace on
the bench. More if you are really into cleaning up the diff.
> I was looking under the rear of my car last night and I've noticed my
> differential is still leaking along with both my lever arms. I'm assuming
> from the pinion seal on the diff. About a month ago I traced it back to
> the
> pinion seal area of the housing. Since then I had cleaned off the
> "breather
> pin" and hoped that would help, but it doesn't seem to be.
> How difficult is this to replace myself. Also, can this be done while the
> differential is in the car? I'm considering trying to find a shop locally
> that will repair the diff and strengthen the differential mounts also if
> the
> differential has to be dropped.
>
> Thanks!
> Adam
>
> 73 Tr6
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