So I drove my baby 7 hours down to my internship last weekend. She did great! The only problem I had was that my hood almost flew off, but that was because of my cheap chinese pieces of sh*t locking hood pins that broke.

Well now I have developed a potentially major problem: The rear axle has started to leak. I replaced that flimsy paper gasket between the housing about a year ago, but I don't think it's leaking from there this time.

There seems to be quite a bit of gear oil on my rear u-joint. Where in the hell would that be coming from? Is there some kind of seal between the carrier housing and flange? Is it hard to replace?

 

Pinion seal? Thats what I would look at.

 

Any idea how hard that is to replace? Any special tools needed?

 

As I have said elsewhere, dead easy to replace.

What sort of hood latch do you have? The OE is a double latch, and should not even effect the pins. The 69 mach1 pin set is still available, if you have to have pins, that's what I'd use.

The pinion flange seal on the front of the differential is easy to replace. Takes about an hour if you have a lift. Remove the drive shaft. Use a drift pin punch to immobilize the pinion flange (or a big pipe wrench) and remove the pinion flange nut. Mark the pinion flange and pinion shaft with paint mark for alignment- probably unecessary, but I'm cautious. Remove the pinion flange. This may require a puller, so have one handy before you start. Lever the old seal out of the housing. Install the new seal. Install the pinion flange. Install a NEW pinion flange nut, and torque to 125 ft-lbs. (These nuts are not hard to get, because since the 50's, the 7", 8", 9" 7.5", and 8.8" all used this same nut.) Install the drive shaft. Top off oil level. The whole job should cost you about $20.

Before 100 people start with the "crush collar blah blah blah…" this is a well-documented and time tested method for replacing the pinion seal. The crush requires 175 ft-lbs to compress, so all this does is seat the new nut exactly where the old one was. This is NOT useful for axle rebuilds, but is excellent for pinion seal replacement.

 

Is this the correct seal?
Pinion Seal

Also why would I need a new pinion nut? I couldn't find one on Napa's site.

As for the hood pins, my hood isn't aligned perfectly so I didn't have the hood latch setup correctly until the other day. I'm pretty sure the hood pins broke because of vibrations. I put new ones on and fixed the latch so I shouldn't have any more troubles.

 

The nut comes with thread locker/ sealant on it. They are cheap, just replace it. I got my pinion nut off with an impact gun.

 

Did you find it at a local parts store?

 

No, it's a Ford part. Mustang suppliers have them, too, I just got one from Glazier's.