Well, this afternoon I put the mountaineer up on jackstands and checked everything out. The front differential seem to be tight. The transfer case has a slight bit of slack, but very little. When I turned the rear driveshaft, the front one turned almost immedately. I did not have time to get the driveshaft down to check the universal jonints, but that is on the agenda for tommrow.
The thing that bothered me is the rear end. The LS works fine, but each wheel has conciderably more slack than the front. I checked my rear end oil, and I could stick my finger in the hole but not touch oil. I got oil on my finger that was clinging to the gear. So I removed the rear cover. The oil was brownish-black in color. I would guess there was about 2.25 quarts, but I did not have a way to measure to know for sure. It did not smell burned. I checked the gears and this is where I need some help. The pinion gear and ring gear look to have a good contact pattern, but the pinion gear extends past the inside of the ring gear by about 1/4". Is this normal? Secondly, the spider gears looked ok, but were much more shiny than the ring and pinion. They were where the slack is in the rear end. The pin at the center sort of shifted as I turned one tire or the other, as in the hole in the center looked elongated. The spider gears on either end of the pin looked to wobble some too. Is this normal? When I turned the tires, it felt kind of rough. I dont know if this is gears or bearings. But the noise seemed to come from the outer part of the axle as opposed to the center. Is it common for the outter bearings to go bad? I know very little about gears, so please fell free to ask/correct me on my terminology. I know what I do from reading the sticky's at the top of this category.
I really need some help to figure this out. Unfortunately, my digital camera is on its way back from being fixed at the moment, so I cannot take pictures of the gears.
I use my Mounty for quite a bit of towing, and need it to be reliable.
