Well honestly I'm not too sure how overdue this was but I know it was. The oil came out almost black . I'm no gear guy and I have never seen these gears brand new, but to me they look pretty good still, nothing looked like it was wearing unevenly.



There was just a small bit of extremely fine metal "dust" on the magnet. But then also these were stuck at the bottom.



I'm guessing it's part of the crappy factory LSD. All the other similar parts that I could see were in there pretty good. Hopefully she'll last much much longer. I'll be doing the front dif as soon as the front gasket gets here, I had to order it since no auto stores around here stock them.

Yes, that's right, I still have the factory LSD in there, 192,000 miles and over 5,000 hours on the engine. And most of the parts are still original back in Oct 2001 when she was built.

 

c-clip... it's a standard issue.. if you opened a diff after that many miles and didn't see one, it would be most certain you have an open diff.. what were those engineers thinking?

 

Guess you lucked out, that it didn't take some gear teeth with it. You should probably pull the rest while you're in there.

 

I had chunks on the bottom of mine too similar. I am at 100000

 

soooo happy i dont have factory LSD...but if i did i prolly wouldnt get stuck in the sand so easily...

 

Pretty sure there is another retaining clip in there and if one broke free, the other one is a time bomb waiting to break. Reason is because the clutch packs are slightly slopping around in there now and the one cannot do anything but get worn and pounded against... I'd try and get the other one out before it cause you problems. The slop will eventually wear down the track they lie in, but with almost 200kmi, I wouldn't worry one bit. Talking after 30-50kmi

 

I was hoping in the near future to get a rebuilt engine and some new gears and LSD but the cost sure is high. I might end up just getting a new LSD and staying at 3.55 gears. Maybe I'll at least see if I can get the rest of the problematic clutch pack out of there. If I do that how would it effect 4x4 mode. I alway thought that 4HI and 4LO locked all four wheels together, which is why it's bad to use it on dry pavement. I was searching and reading some old posts the other day and I thought guys were complaining how really 4x4 mode acts like 2 wheel drive due to just one front and one back wheel getting all the torque. I'll look for that post again.

 

Won't effect 4wd anymore than it would in 2wd mode. 4wd is actually 2wd with the option of 3 sometimes. Both fronts are never locked and are on an open diff. It's the front and rear that bind together. One rear wheel will still slip if need-be, but there will always be one fron and one rear locked together at all times which is where the binding occurs.
If you put your truck on bare ice with one front tire on pavement and hammered the gas, you would sit there and spin. Pretty lousy, but that's what happens, same with a single wheel peel truck(because of the open differential design). Full on front locker are very aggressive and hard to steer...only meant for offroad app's.

 

Ah ok, thanks DirtyDog for clearing that up. So when everyone talks about 3 wheels with power that would be 1 front wheel and both rear wheels when there is a good locker in the dif.
Learning something new everyday