Last Thursday I had the truck in the dealership to correct the rear axle, because I forgot to install the tone ring on the ring gear/locker for the ABS sensor. Anyway, after taking it all apart the mechanic and I noticed something else. There was a groove cut into the passenger side bearing cap. There was a lot of metal shavings also in the axle tubes which had all happened beforeI bought this axle and installed the locker and new gears. I'm almost happy that I had to take it apart again. Because if I had not forgot the tone ring and and never took the axle apart again I wouldn't have been able to take the time to clean the inside out, and who knows how long the new gears would have lasted. I'm intersted to see who else has seen this. The even funnier thing was when I went back the following morning to pay the bill, the same mechanic had a 2004 truck in for the same thing... the cap being damaged. He told me that the truck had been in a week prior for a fluid change, and thats when he noticed it. How many trucks could be out there with this? If the grooves were much deeper than they are, then it could have cut down into the threads and made the cap bolts come loose... What a bad day that would be. I've put 500 miles since the reassembly and everything runs good.

 

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Has no one seen this type of issue before?

 

I don't know exactly what the problem was with mine... but at 34000 miles, everything in the rear end was replaced... gears, bearing, etc. 1000 miles since and everything is great.

Oops... just read the "LSD" part... So I'm guessing mine would be something completely different.

 

Most rear Ram failures are a result of

1. Retaining clips falling off (This is DC fault). Then they do damage.
2. Owner not replacing the diff fliud ever 15K like the manual says to (owners fault).

I really think 15K on rear diff lube is extreme though, I think DC wants it done that often so they owner will inspect and find issues, like clip fragments laying on the differential.....

 

There have been thousands out there with the same problem. You will find the problem on all of the sites...dodgetalk, DTW, HTC...it is a known problem that Dodge is currently unwilling to fix.

 

if you have the rear end rebuilt, is the "problem" corrected? or is there a very good chance of it going out again, soon?

 

No the problem still lies in the retaining clips falling out. It is still up in the air whether or not it is okay to just take out all of the clips. Some people have said yes, they were just used for the install and some people say no, they are there to keep things in therir respective places. That is one of the reasons I replaced mine with an Auburn LSD.

 

This is why I had the rear end rebuilt and replaced with the detroit truetrac. I knew that eventually that the OEM piece would fail and after adding the bigger tires and more abuse I was going to need something to handle the additional load. I needed better traction also, but knowing that the OEM was future junk, it was just the excuse I needed to replace it.

 

Well that stinks.. I assume the open rear end (what I have) has the same issues as the LSD?