1993 Front Differential

[greyboxer]

First, I apologize if the info I'm looking for is somewhere in the forum, I searched but could not find it.
Anyway, the front diff on my 1993 XLT has developed a leak. Normally sealing the diff is no big deal, just take off the cover, clean it up, seal it and you're off right? Not quite. There's no pan on this diff, the axle arm acts as the cover. Is there a way that I'm just not seeing, to seal it up without pulling 1/2 the front end apart. It seems like such a waste for such a minor problem. I've looked all through this site (I think), and in my Haynes Manual those good folks saw fit to describe how to check and change the fluid, but not much more than that.
Any ideas are welcome. Thanks.

 

[Anime]

It's exactly as you see it, to re-seal the cover/TTB arm, it has to be removed from the front diff. As far as I've seen, its a full-on pull the TTB arm and diff off the truck deal, but maybe someone has pulled it off while on the truck still. I do believe it would be tricky to line it back up to seal with either the diff or TTB on the truck, which would be important if a seal leak was the whole point of going to the trouble in the first place.

You might want to use some degreaser and pinpoint the leak, sometimes it's not the diff cover, but the seal for the CV axles on the side. You might also try torquing the bolts on the diff, if they've come loose over time, a bit of tightening might fix the leak.

 

[greyboxer]

Thanks! I'm going to check the side, that never occured to me. If that ends up being it then I'm still ahead of the game. I would have hated to pull it all aprt only to find that wasn't the problem!