1996 blazer with a bad rearend ??? have an 01 parts blazer
 

i have been helping my buddy with his 96 blazer he just bought for $650. first the guy said the fuel pump was bad, no it ran great with a new battery, then wwhile driving the 1.5 miles to his house i noticed it has a bad sounds coming from the mid to the back end. we thiught it was the trans. we put the rear on jack standds and thats when i noticed the rear end had alot of noise, we pulled the drums off and the diff cover. there was an axel seal bad and then i saw the magnet was cover and there was sooooooo much play in the gears, its junk for sure. he also has an 01 blazer that has 82k on it that hhe rolled in a ditch, can we switch the rear ends, there was no tag to tell what gears they have. any way to tell.
any help would be great thanks

how hard is it to do the front grille and headlight swap

Get the RPO/VIN code from the glove boxes, enter them here Comprehensive Chevrolet, Saturn, GMC, Hummer, Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Geo, Dodge, Plymouth, Jeep, Chrysler, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda Truck, Mercedes VIN Decoder & compare the gear ratios.
Not sure about the front end convertion but people have threads/posts about that in here, possibly in
Builds
Body, Paint & Interior & or
DIY sections.

thanksfor the info very helpful

does anyone know if the 98 blazer/jimmys had 3.73 gears and what code i would look for in the glove box

i know 97 down is gt4 (3.73) thats what the 96 has and the 01 has 3.42

bronco, it looks like 1GNCT18WX2K208954.
Mine turns out like Comprehensive Chevrolet, Saturn, GMC, Hummer, Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Geo, Dodge, Plymouth, Jeep, Chrysler, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda Truck, Mercedes VIN Decoder
Scroll down about 3/4 of the way & the axle ratio is the GU6 code.