I was wondering if this is a DIY project. I watched a video and changing the seal seems straight forward but not sure what rotating torque is. I watched a video and the guy just marked everything with chalk, counted the turns to take the nut off and tightened the same number of turns until the lines lined up. Do you need to drain the oil? Is the oil dealer only? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

I had mine done at local shop for $140, included parts/labor and refilling rear fluid. I'm just keeping eye on it, rebuild is like $800 local. The transmission shop I used told me they had good results replacing pinion seal, but have to look at the area to make sure isn't scuffed up and when new seal goes in you have to be very careful not to move anything. The proper way would be replacing the crush washer, replacing new bolt etc, but that's where the $700+ price tag comes in. So I went with the cheaper route and so far no leak. Think 75/90 weight goes in rear, can buy anywhere oil is sold.

 

Yes it is the $800 that worries me. I'm in Canada and we get hosed on the price here, I'm going to call around today. The book says 75w140 synthetic. I dug the manual out last night and figured out that the rotational torque is measuring the torque at the yoke nut with the tires off. After changing the seal you are supposed to add 5 inch lbs to the original torque that you measured.

 

So I went to the dealer to price this out and their oil + parts are 200% higher than everywhere else. That being said I bought everything to do the job myself. Had the truck up on stands and tried to remove the wheels, the lock and one nut came off with my impact but not a chance for the others. I lowered it down and tried getting them off with a 6 ft pipe over a power bar. Finally with all my might I got one side loose. I tried the other side and not a chance of getting the lock off. I just had new tires installed at the end of march at a 4wheel shop. They are telling me that this is a known dodge problem and said they torqued them to 145. Now the locks are screwed. I've had dodge for over 20 years and never had this problem and the book says torque to 95-115. Any comments?

 

My pinion seal was leaking a couple of years back. I took it to my local mechanic that does most of the work on my OLDER Bronco. At the time I really didnt know too much about that kind of repair so I took it to them to have them do it. I stood there and watched them do the entire process. It only took about 30-45 mins. They dropped the driveshaft, unbolted the yoke, then slid off the yoke and then they pried out the pinion seal. Put a new seal in, put the yoke back on, then zipped the nut back on with an impact wrench. Then put the driveshaft back on and I was on my way.

About 6-8 months later I started hearing some noise coming from the rear end, kind of like a bumping sound like something was loose. I did some serious online research and I think I figured out what happened and its not good. Turns out that the pinion nut, which was removed to change the seal, has to maintain a certain PRELOAD on the bearings in order for them to work properly. When the mechanic zipped the pinion nut back on, either they exceeded the pinion preload, or they didnt have enough torque on the pinion nut. This caused the pinion bearing to fail. I did some pricing on the repair and in order to fix the problem, they had to take the whole rear end apart and rebuild it with new bearings. Needless to say it was a very expensive repair. My mechanic of course did not think it was anything they did that caused it, seeing how there are 250,000 miles on the vehicle and it was likely near the end of its life anyway, so I was out of luck there. So I looked around for other options.

I ended up finding a local junk yard that also did repair work. They swapped in a complete rear end out of a wrecked durango for $450 including installation. Thats less than half of what it would have cost to rebuild the old one.

So after driving it around for a few days, I noticed a new sound coming from the rear end. It only did it in reverse. I took it in to my mechanic again, and they found that 3 lug nuts on one side were less than hand tight. So they ended up having to replace all the lug studs on that side. Since then I have had no more trouble out of the rear end.

Moral of the story, even mechanics screw up. sometimes twice.

This just shows how a simple seal repair can lead to numerous other problems because people not following instructions. You are supposed to TORQUE the pinion nut with a TORQUE WRENCH. Not doing that, and taking the easy way out, caused me alot more grief than it should have.

 

So I brought it back to the shop and they ended up screwing the locks getting them off and I had to pay to replace the lugs. They said they were rusty as well as the lugs but I just had the truck there for new tires at the end of march, shouldn't they have cleaned them?I figured while I was there they could do the pinion seal. They charges 1.5 hours and I'm pretty sure they didn't do the rotational torque or mark the drive shaft yoke alignment. When I talked to them they said the torque is 135, can someone confirm the torque? They also mentioned that usually the bearing isn't far behind when the seal is replaced, is this true? or is it that if the job isn't done correctly then this will happen? What do I do now?

 

The saga continues. The seal started leaking again so they replaced it but I had to pay the oil and the part. They emailed me when it was done that it is in the parking lot with the keys in it, nice customer service. This was last week and this weekend I drove 100 km pulling my boat, I stopped to check the pinion. It was okay but the wheel seal was poring out oil and the truck and boat was covered. Coincidence or sabotage.