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Tired of looking under your Jeep and finding a puddle of
differential fluid?
Fixing that leak might not be such a bad job after all...
Assuming that it has not all leaked out, you will first want to
drain the gear lube by popping off the differential cover. |
| For the rear Dana 35, first the driveshaft straps had to be removed and
then the yoke nut. Since turning the yoke nut, tries to make the
Jeep "drive", an impact wrench is about the best option. |
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| Note that the Dana 35 axle uses a "crush sleeve"
on the pinion bearing.
As I understand it, this makes the pinion nut
torque specification more critical. Not knowing this, I just
tightened the nut down with my electric impact wrench, which is rated at
210 ft. lbs. max. I think this is within 10 lbs of the recommended
spec.
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| Here is the the Dana 35 differential with the yoke and old seal removed. |
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I know that there are nifty tools available, specifically made for
removing seals like this, but I found that a chisel and a 5 lb hammer work
well too. On the left is the new seal and on the right is the old
seal. |
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| The new seal is shown here. After lining up the seal with the
differential housing, I used a piece of wood as a buffer for the hammer as
I seated the new seal. |
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Here you see the Dana 30 housing with the yoke and seal removed.
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| The Dana 30 seal is a bit different from the Dana 35. |
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| Here is the other side of the Dana 30 seal along with a washer that get
situated next to the bearing. |
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Doing this project is a good time to do the maintenance and clean out the
whole diff housing before adding new gear lube. This time I used
some Liquid Wrench lubricant as a way to wash down the gears and diff
housing. In the past, I have used brake cleaner, but have since
wondered if that contributed to my leaky seals. Brake cleaner is not
recommended to come in contact with plastics and rubber. Since the
gears don't need to be cleaned to a point of being "grease
free", a very light-weight lubricant seemed to make sense. |
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© Copyright 2001 Scott Rozman
All Rights
reserved.
Photos: Scott Rozman |