the wheel bearings and seals are on the ends of the axels just in from the wheel. youll need a slide hammer to repalce the bearings. they typically dont cause problems. its not one of these things you replace after a certain milage. what i would do is get the kit without the bearings and seals and just go to autozone and get seals. they are easy enough to replace. youll just have to slide your axles out to get to them. or if your good at holding on to things get the bearings and seals and hold on to the bearings. use them once the others start causing problems. trey

 

lol, he's going to have them out doing the gear swap anyway!

$400 doesn't sound like a bad deal, I know a lot of people say you get what you pay for, so quiz the shop to make sure they do the job right and not just slap things in there. See if they have the setup tools to properly set the depth of the pinion, check backlash on the ring gear, etc.

I've done about 5 gear changes, and about 11 differential swaps without these tools. They aren't spot on, but are setup pretty damn close, quiet, and have the correct mesh pattern on the ring gear.

There are machine tolerances when they are milling out the rears, but all gears are machined to a tee. All your doing w/ the shims in the pinion and on the diff races is zeroing out factory slop. I usually take feeler gauges and figure out what the pinion shim used was, set the same thickness on the new pinion, take a set of calipers and measure the thickness of the shims on either side of the diff and set them aside. I install the pinion w/ the new crush sleeve, torque it to spec and check the drag on the bearings. I then install the new diff, try setting up w/ the factory shims, use marking compound or for electronics guys I use radio shack thermal grease, same results. If the diff needs to be offset either way I break open the shim kit, move the diff .010" either way and keep the same total thickness the factory had setup.

example:

.350 .350
.360 .340
.340 .360

This gives me a quick and dirty on which way the diff needs to go and then I can fine tune it from there. I just look to see that the gear mesh looks the same on both sides of the ring teeth and they are in the middle of the tooth.

Sorry for the novel, just trying to put a light on the black box under your car. There's not a whole lot to it.

good luck.

 

yea but he doesnt have to take them all the way out to do the gear change

oh yea and if you do change your axel seals use the end of the axel to pry the old seal out. just use the c clamp notch as the pry point and lip it behind the seal. then just push a little and the seal pops right out.