wow, thats crazy man. did you go with the NAPA rebuilds in the end?

 

^ Nah, I used one of Jeff's old ones though the NAPA rebuilds are cheap nobody has em in stock with no delivery date. I should probably order one as a spare, I would imagine I have some time left with this newer one anyway

 

wow, that's crazy, stupid NAPA. yeah, definitely worth having one, probably the drivers side as that seems to be the one that breaks more often.

 

Do you have this vibration at any mph when a load is put on? I just swapped my rear and I now have a weird vibration at like 70ish mph under a load. 1st and 2nd gear accel fine then around 70mph it's just weird. Could I have not tightened something down correctley? Or just at the same time I swapped my diff my Axels went? At stock. Height as well. At 79xxx miles

 

Going through this myself again. Got the cups removed and inspected last night. Drivers side has pitting on the forward drive portion of the cup. Other side feels great which is surprising considering mine have almost 200k on them. The roller bearings on the prop ends all look /feel great still. I managed to find a rebuilt axle assembly for $100 at Carquest Auto parts earlier this summer in anticipation, I think it was the last one in the whole USA lol. They don't even have them listed as an option ot order anymore, just new ones at $500.

I don't have the tools to remove the whole axel though so I think I’m just going to rob the cup off it for the drivers side that is pitted. Swap the other cup to the other side and put my spacers back in. Should be good to go for a wile I think.

 

what special tools do you need to remove the axles?

a ball joint popper makes it a lot quicker, and then rent a 36 mm socket from autozone, other than that, just wrenches and ratchet

 

just a few sockets

 

No ball joint tool and no 36mm socket with a trq wrench large enough to get 221fp trq for the nut.

Turns out the rebuilt axle cups and prop bearings were smaller then OEM which I thought was interesting, so I did not end up using this cup. I just swapped my old cups and put the spacers back on. Feels good as new again thankfully, this being my last way left to run them before I will have to get all new cups or shafts.

 

Does this ever happen on stock cars? my MY03 has almost 70k on it, I thought maybe I bent my rear wheels some how but I always found that odd that my rears would be bent and not the fronts. But my car is almost stock(intake and cat back) no suspension work at all.

 

^^^ yeah with 70k its possible. The easiest thing to do is pick up some T1R half spacers so you don't have to pull your shafts out of the diffs to install them. Take you less then an hour to do the job and you will know if your cups were the problem if that fixes your vibration. Next time around when they start to vibrate again you will have to swap your cups. When they start to vibrate again then add the spacers again. Each fix has net me about 50k miles, so as long as you don't break a shaft, you shoudl be able to get about 200k out of them before needing to replace the cubs and or shafts/prop bearings.