Those pieces went somewhere and it will only get worse. It could end up taking out the ring & pinion if left too long. The G80 makes it more complicated in order to replace these parts though.

 

Another question, after I pushed the axles in, but before I removed the c clips, I accidentally turned one axle a little. Will this affect the timing? I thought I got it back, but I'm pretty sure it's not perfect.

Thanks again. There were some decent size pieces stuck to the magnet, not sure if those would be the ones or not of course.

 

Rotation of the axles will not make a difference as far as putting them back together properly.

 

Any tricks to pulling the old axle seals out? They seem pretty stuck, and I'm afraid of damaging the bearings. Will just a hammer claw work, or should I be using something special? O'Reilly's tool was nothing more than a double sided claw...

NM...a few taps and getting on it a bit more did the trick!

 

So the G80 isn't so much locking as it is limited slip, correct? The axle seals I bought for the locking differential are too large for the axle shaft. That being said, where would I find the C or K country code?

 

One more stupid question, should I put threadlocker on any of the differential bolts (cover, pinion lock bolt)?

Thanks!

 

The pinion nut should be a self locking nut. I wouldn't use any loctite on the cover bolts. About the only place that I have used it in the past is on the differential caps.

 

Thanks again for the help. Finally got everything back together and the rear end didn't crunch up, so that's good I'll have to make sure it doesn't leak after I drive it on the Interstate for a few hours tomorrow.

 

So I pulled apart the rear axles/differential today planning on replacing the axle seals and bearings if necessary. This is the first time I have done this and wasnt sure what to expect. Following the awesome advice already on this forum, everything went well until it came time to actually pull the bearing. It looks like when the bearings were replaced some time ago, they put in the units that have two built in seals on each side of the bearing and the whole bearing unit is moved outboard of normal.

The guy at AUTOZONE seemed to think there were two options for that axle, one with the big unit and the other just the stock normal bearing. Is this true or is the larger part that I seem to have just a replacement to move the place the bearings ride on the axle?

Anyway, I wasnt exactly sure what was up so I proceeded to put the axle puller in and hammered away like everyone said to do. I proceeded in tearing all the innards out of the bearing without removing the metal housing (see pics below). I am now in the situation that whoever made the stupid housing did not leave enough of a lip for the bearing puller to latch on to... I tried using the next larger puller but it is too big to spread inside the axle... not sure what to do now... the only thought I had was to get a long piece of 1/2 inch cast iron pipe and hammer it out from the other side, though not sure if that would work either since the lip isnt very big. At this point I'm not even sure that steel piece is supposed to come out. Am I on the right track? Help appreciated!

 

You can see here also the silver metal sticking out from the axle I believe is the bearing housing itself and it looks like when they put it in they put green locktite around it. I havent seen this on any other blazer so im a little curious. Is it supposed to be removed? And if so why does it stick out beyond the axle tube?