Does anyone local to Chicago-ish have any experience swapping the rear gears on our beloved s2000's? There's a local assembled diff for $1300 OR I can get the gearset from an RX7 for about $250 and my friend has a good diff for $350. It can't be THAT hard to put the gears in, right?

I have done a TON of thread searching and all of the people all say they have to assemble and disassemble the diff several times to get the pinion spacing and backlash right. I am not afraid of how long it will take, but it would be nice to have someone to bounce questions off of during the assembly. There's no step by step sticky thread (at least I haven't found one on here) and that would be SUPER nice to have.

OR someone that has experience with the entire process can say $1300 for an already assembled diff is a good deal and to just do that. This is the input I am looking for. The person selling the local diff says that it'll cost me more to do it myself than to buy his assembled one. I just have a hard time believing after the initial $600 for the gearset and the diff that it will cost me an additional $700 for crush washers and other random parts. OR maybe it will end up costing me a ton of time and money to get it right? That's why I'm asking.

I even PM'd the puddymod guy but he has logged in a few times and never answered me, so I have already tried to reach out to him.

 

Puddymod: https://www.facebook.com/ben.p.herne/