What do you mean buy buying a whole new bolt in rear?

 

That when you buy a rear from a company that sets it up for your car this everything between the rear wheels. The old GM 12 bolts or Ford 9in. They tend to be a little pricey.

 

What Gorn is getting at is that you can order an ungraded, drop in, 9in, 12 bolt or S60 from Moser or Stranger Engineering but they are 2500-3k bucks. Factory rear from a junk yard would run you about $150-400 depending on the yard. The only downfall to that is you do not always know what you are getting.

I agree with Gorn on rear ends being unforgiving, but to an extent. I will still find it hard to believe he blew it up. Was it done exactly right? No, but going a few in-lbs over spec is not going to crush the sleeve to the point that the bearings are going to lock up. If the OP doesn't want to pull the cover just yet, I would check the trans, drive shaft and the rear end for play (grab yoke and see if you can move it up/down, left/right, in/out excessively and hear if it clunks. If that all checks out, pull the cover and take a peak just as assurance. If it has lots of play, make sure it's in the pinion and not the u-joint. If it clunks, well, that'll pretty much tell all.

If you have someone rebuild it, make sure to ditch the crush sleeve for a solid pinion spacer. That way if you ever have to change the seal again, you don't have to have any worry about getting it back together exactly perfect.

 

He did ask use to assume the the gears where done for.

I guess we should have started with GM does not recommend reusing a crush sleeve. That why its hard to find a spec for it. To replace the pinon seal at the dealership we removed the rear differential and the pinion gear and install a new crush sleeve, reset pinion depth and recheck the rest of the rear setup.

Now I have been told by old school techs that if you mark the nut and pinion and count the turns to get the nut off, then replace the nut to the turns and mark you have a good chance of getting it very close to right. Now that your rear is messed up the only way to get it back is a new crush sleeve and resetting the whole rear. If the gears broke up you should replace the bearings in the rear, all it take is a very small pc of metal to get into a bearing and one revolution, two months later the humming starts.

 

So the first steps I will take I guess is Jack the car up, see if there is play in the driveshaft and the yoke, then pull the cover off and see If i see anything is wrong in there. Right?

 

Personally I would check the pinion for play and rotate the tires in neutral. You could also with the car jacked up you could put the car in first gear and let the engine idle and see if there is any noise.

 

So check pinion, I'm assuming check it when the case is open? And move the gear end? Or like just move the yoke to see if there is play after taking the driveshaft off? Not sure if I would hear anything with the car in 1st gear idling with foot on the clutch, I have muffler off so it is very loud right now, but mind you when it happened when I was decelerating at arround 60-70 km/h I hear it grinding on the test drive.

 

UPDATE: Just got home and jacked the car up and spun the wheels in neutral with e-brake off, the wheels only turn towards the back of the car and lock when i try to turn the other way (towards the front of the car). Is this normal? Will be digging deeper after I eat dinner.

 

UPDATE: Just finished doing multiple tests as you guys suggested, I tried moving the driveshaft for play up and down and in and out and nothing, then proceded to take the driveshaft off and the yoke had play in it and it was leaking again from the seal i just replaced, assuming the leak is caused from the play in the yoke, then took the front cover off and then quickly found my problem...as you can see in the pictures. The magnet was clean yesterday as i took it off to clean the magnet ans change the fluid and replace the gasket.