Replacing the rear diff

indiemo

New member
It looks like I may need to replace/rebuild the rear differential on my 98 Sahara. I've never really done any drive train internals work so I was curious if anyone had a link to a detailed, step by step outline of what would go into it so I can see if I'm up to the task. I had a shop rebuild the rear diff in my old TJ and it cost me over a grand so I'm looking to avoid that this time around if at all possible.
 
In my old diff the spiders were all pitted. Not sure if water got in there or what. On this new one, I'm not sure yet. It might not even need replaced. All I know is that it's whining a little bit durning normal driving and that it acts funny once it warms up. It makes this very noticable, gentle whining/rubbing type noise during low speed turning, kind of gets a bit jerky, and ALMOST seems like it wants to stall out. Not sure if it's the rear diff yet, but that's what my gut tells me.
 
$1000 is very high to set up a rear end. Shop around. Setting up gears requires a lot of specialized tools to do it right and also a lot of experience. This is especially critical for a daily driver.
Anybody can bolt the pieces in, but it takes a lot of experience to properly set the pinion depth, backlash and know what the wear patterns indicate. If a gear set is improperly installed and operated the first go round, then it has to be replaced if it has to be redone.
 

So if I was doing a full replace as opposed to a rebuild would all of that still be involved or would it essentially be sliding out the axles, removing the bearing supports, dropping in a new diff, and doing it all backwards?
 
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