Differential Swap: Should I Use A Lift or Not?

[zKars]

One more round of my tried and true ideas to make it even easier.

One the floor, jack up back end only and put jack stands under cross frame in front of rear wheels. Tires should be 2-4 inches or so off the ground when solid on stands. Nice and high for clearance and one other reason. Put floor jack under the diff.

Its been mentioned about how hard it is to get the half shaft nuts at diff end and especialy the drive shaft nuts undone, right? So don't do it. Just remove half shafts from wheel end. Read on.

Remove front cross member 4 bolts and two moustache bar nuts. drop diff on floor jack, pulling backwards when you get below the gas tank and pull drive shaft out of trans. With butt in the air like this (assuming level ground), nothing (not much) dribbles out of trans. Magic.

Now undo nasty diff end and drive shaft bolts in the comfort of a nice open area of the shop you are safe warm and comfy. and can take big swings with hammers.

Note this technique ignores the presence of an exhaust in the way. Depending, you can slip the diff sideways as you drop it and get the left halfshaft and M bar clear, or drop the exhaust first.

Replace is opposite of remove. Oh, get fill plug out of new diff before its hard to get to back in the car!

Happy diff swap!

[Hardway]

How did your diff swap project go? Some mentioned the difficult task of getting the half shaft nuts in place. If you are just swapping the diff and leaving the half shafts in place then yes its a bit of a pain but not impossible. One thing to check is to make sure you have nuts that are designed to be used with the half shafts as they are shorter in height than what you can find at the parts store and I believe are 14mm instead of 17mm so they are easier to get a wrench on too. MSA sells them for $1.07/ea. Highway robbery I know but if yours are incorrect or mix matched break down and buy a set. Nothing better than working with new hardware. If your half shafts need any attention now is obviously the time to do it. Below is what my R200 diff and rebuilt half shafts looked like before they went back in the car. It was a lot easier to bolt them up to the diff first then having to deal with getting them bolted up once under the car.