Slight ARB carnage?

[erfworm]

Figured this would be the best forum to post this in, since you hardcore guys have seen your fair share of carnage.
Background: Changing out my rear diff. fluid the other day and found these weird ground out spots on my ARB carrier and corresponding spots on the housing and cover. How would these spots contact? Pinion is tight, bearing caps are tight. How can the carrier deflect that much? Haven't checked the straightness of my axle tube yet.
This is on my 62 running 37s and 4.88s. Any ideas?

 

[VETTE60]

looks almost like a piece of metal got between the carrier and the diff. any broken parts in the bottom of the axle housing?

 

[erfworm]

No major chunks, my magnetic drain plug had a bit of small stuff on it, looked about the amount you would expect from what we see there. The spot in pic.1 is typical all the way around the carrier. All the spider gears, bearings and races and ring gear teeth look good, so I don't know what "chunk" of metal would've been in there?

 

[H8PVMNT]

Kind of looks like a peice of pinion tooth or a peice of something else got jammed in there to me. You would think it would have been in there though but maybe it got processed into small shavings. If your housing was that bent I think you would be able to see it with the naked eye. If it were deflection that would be ALOT of deflection. I don't remember you being that hard on stuff. I would yank the ARB diff and clean it out if I were you. I had something like that create some residual shavings inside a locker once and it ended up wrecking the locker.

I guess if everything still works don't sweat it too much though...

Somebody on here probably has seen it before.

 

[Tapage]

that's a bunch of deflection to make that happen .. ARB touching housing .. thought other stuff can break before it defect that much ..

 

[H8PVMNT]

Hey did you install these or did you have someone do it? The gouge in the housing could have been from old gear tooth damage from before your re-gear and the ARB might have been dropped on the shop floor during installation. Just a thought.

Oh I just re-read and I see that the marks on the carrier are all the way around... weird. I really don't know.

 

[Trollhole]

Something broke and got all magarita'd or something fell out and got made into a daiquiri.

I'd pull the axles and the chunk and inspect carefully.

 

[erfworm]

I plan on checking it out this weekend. I just thought, late last night, that maybe I dropped a c-clip and the axle is being held in by my rear discs. I would expect if that was the case to have some strange noises and what not going on, but I don't know?
Tapage, I agree seems like a lot of deflection, so I think I'm ruling that out.
Hopefully I'll get to tear into it soon and get to the bottom of this.
Thanks for the replies, I'll keep you posted.

 

[erfworm]

upon further inspection today, I found I do indeed have a broken side gear tooth, oops! The problem I have now is that II seem to have misplaced my cross shaft retaining pin tool. I don't recall what kind of fastener that pin is. Anything else I can get in there besides the ARB specific tool to remove that thing. Looks like I'll be calling ARB on Monday, is replacement of the side gear something they need to do?

 

[Cruiserdrew]

upon further inspection today, I found I do indeed have a broken side gear tooth, oops! The problem I have now is that II seem to have misplaced my cross shaft retaining pin tool. I don't recall what kind of fastener that pin is. Anything else I can get in there besides the ARB specific tool to remove that thing. Looks like I'll be calling ARB on Monday, is replacement of the side gear something they need to do?

You can insert a small allen wrench into the hold in the pin and with careful fiddling, you can draw the pin out without the special tool.

 

[Bret]

I used a small scribe with the end bent up at the tip. A bit of a pain but it worked.

 

[71-CRUISER]

The cross pin pin is threaded on the end so if you can get a long enough screw or similar in the hole it should grab it an pull it out. The ARB tool looks like an allen wrench w a tapered thread on the long end.

 

[erfworm]

Thanks guys, I got it out fiddling with an allen wrench. Now, I gotta see how much ARB wants for new gears!