Barley

I recently got my rear end redone, every bearing and seal replaced.

It was fine and dandy until a week ago when I noticed an oil leak in my garage, I took the car for a drive and noticed it was driving really rough. Felt like I was scraping through gears rather than shifting. I took it to another friend's mechanic and we found the driveshaft had come so loose you could literally turn the bolts with your fingers. He put locktite on them and tightened them. However, I still have the leak.

I called up the first mechanic and told him whats up, and he said he thinks that the pinion seal took a beating from the loose driveshaft. Before I end up spending anymore money on this rear end, I wanted to get a second opinion. Does that sound like it's the pinion seal? It's leaking from the pinion side, not the cover side by the way. Furthermore, would I need to buy more gear oil? I used Royal Purple and they don't sell it in my city. This whole things been a major pain in the butt.

I have a 2500 mile trip that I'm doing in less than a month and I don't want any surprises.

homernukem

It's super easy to check the fluid level in the rear end. I'd say since you have such a nice one you should make sure the fluid is the right level then clean the outside real good. Find out for sure where it's leaking from and fix that leak once again.

ctgreddy

there's only 2 places to leak from, the back by the cover or the front by the pinion seal. certainly sounds like it's the seal. take it to the guy who tightened your shaft and have him throw a seal in it. the seals are like 10 bucks and you will lose some fluid when you pull the seal along with wahtever already leaked out so you're gonna need another quart or so.

Barley

I'm getting the seal replaced tomorrow, and will make sure he puts on locktite this time. There's a second leak now though, I looked under the car and it seemed to be coming from the quad shock. I bought the car with a shot passenger side quad shock, but it was never leaking badly. Until now anyway.

I'm going to be taking them off next month when I buy a bunch of new suspension parts including LCA's. My question is, should I just wait the 3 weeks or should I take them off now?

ctgreddy

if it's leaking and making a mess you can take them off now. if they're shot then odds are they're not doing anything anyways.

Barley

Thanks, I guess I'll get on taking them off this week.

Jay-rod427

Be sure when your guy replaces the pinion seal you have to remove and replace the pinion nut and crush sleeve and should be replaced with new technically, but make sure the nut has loctite on it if you reuse the same one. Also make sure the pinion nut is properly torqued to 150lbs. in a perfect world you would replace the nut and crush sleeve and go through the whole process of re crushing a new crush sleeve to the proper pinion preload. but i know of a lot of guys who just reuse the old one and torque to 150 lbs as well as reuse the nut with plenty of loctite.