Seal was leaking... There was a puddle under the diff housing and the housing always had a drip getting ready to drop. I used a 3 jaw puller to remove the flange. I tried to pry it off for about 33 seconds then stopped being obtuse and grabbed the puller and it came off easy. I don't know if the bearing spacer is crush or solid. I did not check torque. The advice I found here on MUD was to count the number of turns it took to remove the flange nut. I reinstalled the nut with the same number of turns, 8 2/3 in my case. My arms indicate the torque was every bit of 180 ft lbs on that last 1/4 turn of the nut.
Good luck! Please share your experience![]()
Swapped the companion flange this afternoon. I had biffed mine on some rocks at windrock back in October along with candy striping the prop shaft. Had a fair amount of driveline complaining as a result.Seal was leaking... There was a puddle under the diff housing and the housing always had a drip getting ready to drop. I used a 3 jaw puller to remove the flange. I tried to pry it off for about 33 seconds then stopped being obtuse and grabbed the puller and it came off easy. I don't know if the bearing spacer is crush or solid. I did not check torque. The advice I found here on MUD was to count the number of turns it took to remove the flange nut. I reinstalled the nut with the same number of turns, 8 2/3 in my case. My arms indicate the torque was every bit of 180 ft lbs on that last 1/4 turn of the nut.
Good luck! Please share your experience![]()
Tried to rebalance the prop shaft but it still had a noticeable “complaint” at 30-50mph- so I bought a new propshaft during the discounted sales over thanksgiving. After installing the new prop shaft my high speed runs were really smooth but I could still feel a minor vibe between 30-40 which is why I decided to swap the damaged flange for a new one.
I installed 4.88’s back in February so all new seals and bearings including a solid spacer ( which makes retorqing pinion nut simple).
Today I didn’t bother to change the outer pinion seal since it’s got just a few thousand miles on it- (I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt me.)
After unstaking the nut, it spun off pretty easily with rattle gun- the companion flange pulled off by hand- and since the back end was lifted proceeded to spew gear oil all over my work mat- doh

Install was pretty straightforward. Test drive tomorrow.