Your best bet may be to get a boneyard rear. Otherwise expect an Auburn
diff (excellent street piece) to be in the 350 range, a gear set to be
around 200, bearing set around 125 (with axle bearing and seals), and then
labor.
TonyC
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Rey <don.rey@uconn.edu>
To: dakota-truck@dakota-truck.net <dakota-truck@dakota-truck.net>
Date: Monday, May 17, 2004 10:30 PM
Subject: DML: Help! rear diff grinding, smoking, boiling
>
>Hi, I've been lurking for quite a while... it was a busy semester at
school.
>My 89 Dakota convertible just started giving me problems tonight.
>
>The rear differential seemed to suddenly start crapping out on me. It still
>drives alright as of now (though now that its parked in my driveway, I'm
not
>taking it anywhere soon!) It started grinding and clunking badly just
>tonight. In the past few days it just started making different slight
>grinding noises when I would take significant right turns (especially at
>speed). The grinding was just starting to become audible over the
driveshaft
>howl... and tonight when I started driving, it made several clunking noises
>coupled with a much louder grinding. I drove it the remaning few miles to
my
>destination and then 7 miles home and it started smoking. I looked under
>there when I parked it, and it was dripping (one drop every minute or so)
>and was audibly boiling. The whole diff case was hot; the dripping and
>boiling sound was coming out the front.
>
>In a few minutes I'm going to pop the cover off and take a look (no I
havn't
>done that yet). What I'm considering is going with an Auburn posi as a
>replacement. Can anyone tell me if thats a good idea or a bad idea? Should
I
>not be assuming that it will drop right in? Are there better options...
>should I not go to posi? I've never done rear-end work before but I need to
>learn and I've got the manuals. I have to do this fast; this is my main
>vehicle... (on my Dart I'm still workign on the camshaft, heads, intake,
>etc). BTW, the truck is a pre-mag 3.9L auto 4x4, currently not posi. To my
>knowledge its never been rebuilt... and its got 226,000 miles on it. Pretty
>sure its a 3.21 ratio (I'm about to go make certain of that). Also, what
>distributors would you suggest? From a quick search online, National
>Drivetrain offers the Auburn posi for about $330.
>
>Thanks in advance for your help!
>
>Don
>89 Dakota Convertible 4x4
>74 Dart Sport 340
>CT
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 01 2004 - 10:59:12 EDT