This is in a 1998 5.9 gas 2500. The truck has always had a whine in the rear since I've owned it. Now the pinion seal is leaking so I took the cover off to get a look and the carrier moves back and forth about 1/4" or so.
I just read that the bearing race can get forced into the tube because there isn't much of a lip there, if I understand correctly.
Any other reason for this to happen? I'll have it apart this weekend so I'll know for sure, but I figured any insight from people that know more will only help.

I hope we can post YouTubes here...

 

Ok, that's bad. It shouldn't move AT all side to side.....

 

Crazy, right? Other than a clunk going from reverse to drive it wasn’t doing much. I even towed a skid steer and trailer with it lol

 

Yer lucky it didn't rip teeth off the gears.....

You can reset up the gears, but, I would expect that no matter what ya do, they are going to be noisy......

 

Updating the thread -
The driver side carrier bearing is shot. The rollers actually fell out on to the ground when I pulled the carrier. The inner race came off by hand. Probably need a new carrier too then.







The driver side wheel bearings will be replaced too. Something bad happened in here. The spindle nut has been beat on pretty hard by something. All the gears look fine though.

 

Where did those metal chunks come from in the wheel bearings???? That's not good.....

 

Has to be the drivers side wheel bearings, haven’t taken those out yet.
A lot of that is what looks like it was a bearing cage, which also came out when I took the cover off the middle. The cages in the middle were all intact.