Here is the direct quote on my service writeup: "Found vibration at freeway speeds, inspected. Found spring came out of the pinion seal. This caused the vibration. Installed new pinion seal ok now." Spring? C Clip? Anything to worry about?

 

That is no big deal. There is a skinny little spring that runs around the inside of the seal lip to help support the rubber part of the seal. Sometimes you'll have it pop out when installing the yoke and you can't see that it happened. It won't have damaged anything else.

 

Just picked it up and after 15 miles it seems fine so far. Looks like about $650 just in parts to R&R the differential.

It'll get a real test tomorrow, 180 miles with a sled in the bed.

 

Seems fine - 90 miles with a 600lb sled in the back and another 90 empty. It was a little brisk this morning but no diff problems.

 

-18º... holy cow. That rearend will surely experience an extreme thermal range of testing.

 

had the recall N08 done. pinion nut retainer installed Part # CBHKM342AA

 

I got my first recall notice last December and another 1 since and still no parts.

 

Just took our 2009 Ram in for the recall. Now we have a rental car for a few days lol!! This is only the second one they have found faulty in the shop, they had two trucks that locked up on the highway. All the rest they have checked were good to go.

We have 182,000 kms or about 113,000 miles on the truck with a small amount of towing. It has been making some noise lately.

Will update after the fix.

Bill

 

Well, got the truck back yesterday, pretty quick!! Its a good thing 'cause the Chrysler 200 rental car isn't a good choice for the weather we have been getting lol!!

Put about 100 kms on it between last night and this morning and its nice and quiet.

They ended up doing a complete rebuild of the rear diff.

Pretty happy, the repair and rental car was all covered. No cost to us at all.

Bill

 

That spring had nothing to do with your vibration other than the vibration possibly causing the spring to come out or brake into pieces. It sounds to me like the pinion nut came loose enough to cause the pinion SHAFT to wobble enough to wear out the pinion seal. There is one other thing about our 9.25 rear ends that everyone fails to mention. These rearends have what you call a crush sleeve bearing. Meaning that you must torque the nut enough to CRUSH the sleeve and then back off a tad to the torque specs. Most important with crush sleeve rearends...you are not supposed to re torque the nut without replacing the sleeve because a second attempt MAY crush the sleeve past it's recommended specs. Think of the sleeve as a beer can shaped object. Once you crush the beer can it's cruched...it doesn't come back and reshape itself. Therefore, the SLEEVE would have to be replaced. However, if you truly know what you are doing like most VERY good rear end specialist you may be able to re torque it without damaging the old sleeve. But then it would be a wing and a prayer that everything went well. So only time will tell if the guy who fixed your rearend without replacing the sleeve or if he did that he torqued it right on the first attempt