Man I'm tryin, but this Navy thing is gettin in my way! Jerks messin with my wrenchin time, gettin tired of it. But soon I'll be REtired and I might have more time then.
As for the beast, I got her into the shop Friday and tore the drivers side rear axle spring down. Some schmuck had attempted to repair a broken bolt that aligns the springs by welding some all-thread to it. Did not work so well, the head sheared off (& was hammer welded into the alignment hole) and the axle slipped forward about 3 inches. Needless to say, the pins, bushings and shackle are toast,... After a good round with the wire brush and a coat of WD-40, I dropped them all off at Motor Trucks to be repaired yesterday.
Saturday my roomate came along and helped me yank the pinion housing and carrier assebly out of the rear end. In the process I discovered that this rear end is neither the Corp. or the Eaton rear in the manual,...
It's an Eaton, but I'll be durned if I know what one! It looks to be a heavier model, I'm thinkin that the company that did the dump truck conversion swapped a heavier axle in there to up the gross weight. It was 16K from the factory, but seein as the truck weighs 9K and 5 yards of gravel weighs in at 15K, it just dont work.
Anyway, pulled the pinion carrier apart (and managed to muck up the threads on the pinion, thats at the MT shop as well), pulled out the bearings, saw that they all had serious pitting on them, and hence attempted to find workable replacements. Fat flippin chance! One cup is on the East coast, it's bearing is on back order, and the other cap & bearing has been discontinued. They're all Timken parts tho, so I wrote them with the numbers and specs, hopefully they can help me out.
Didn't do anything to the carrier assy and diff, it's actualy pretty tight and I really dont wanna mess with it if I dont have to. Odds are the bearings are pitted as well, but I'll deal with that later, like when I'm not broke from having the spring rebushed. I'll still have to do the other spring pack, so I suppose I can chase down the carrier bearings then. I'm gonna write to Eaton with the P/N's off the housing first and see what bearings it came with before hand & if none are available, they'll just have to stay as is.
