The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot '60-'66 Trucks 64-69 Coil Spring Rear End

Hey folks, I posted this in engine and driveline already, so this may get kicked out, but I thought it'd be good to address this audience.

I've run into a little trouble with the '64, it's my daily driver and I'm riding the bus until the fix so any advice is wildly appreciated here. Here goes:

The rear end is in poor shape. It's a coil spring 12 bolt truck unit, 3:73 gears. Both axle seals are bad and the brakes need rebuilt. The brake work led to the discovery of all this other mess. So I was off to fix the seals, no big deal, peel off the diff cover and find this other gory mess. Looks like the pinion has slid forward into the carrier, so the carrier is all marred up and the face of the pinion gear is ate off, can't tell exactly how much but it looks pretty rough.

So I'm kicking around options and I thought I'd ask your opinions. Option (1)is a total overhaul of this rear end, including the brakes, axle seals and perhaps bearings, plus a gear swap. The carrier is ugly but functionally sound as near as I can tell. I don't really like this option because I'd want to hand the gear swap job over to a pro, and I think that might be costly. With everything involved, this sorta seems like the 'polishing a turd' option to me, even though I prefer to squeeze all the life possible out of original parts. Option (2)is a complete new rear end drum to drum. The cost of one of these would likely be comparable to the cost of repair to the old unit, and I could easily install it myself. I've already put out the wanted ad for anyone's used 64-69 rear ends in the Swap Meet. Can you folks through out some references for new or remanufactured units for me to price? I'd appreciate it?

Again, any thoughts or feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks!

I'd say go for a rebuild this way you stay away from the 'mass roduced' ready to bolt in units. The previous owner of my 63 had the diff rebuilt for $1200 but he had new Richmond posi unit and gears with new Moser axles put in which explains the amount he spent...ther's no reason why you should not need to spend more than $600. You could always get the internals from a 68-72 12 bolt and swap it over

This post didn't get many takers, hopefully that's an indication of the general dependability of the GM truck 12 bolt.

Anyway, for posterity's sake, the solution I came up with was to swap in another 12 bolt from a '69. The control arms mount up fine and the width of this rear is correct, but one problem you'll run into is the tracking arm. Apparently they changed up mounting locations in 65 so you'll need an adjustable tracking arm/panhard bar that is compatible with the 64 frame.

The more you know...