As some of you know, I broke my front passenger's side CV on Saturday (see post). This evening Scott (JadeRunner) and Jeff (the marmot) helped me install a new re-manufactured axle. It seemed to go okay.

But when I got home, I discovered gear oil leaking out of the seal beween the axle and the ADD housing, and not a small leak at that. (It doesn't appear to actively leak when the truck is parked.)

I pulled on the shaft to confirm that the C ring was properly seated to hold the shaft in, and it wouldn't pull out, which is good. However, I could push it in a little bit, which struck me as odd.

After studying the situation more, I discovered that the re-manufactured axle appears to be mising a metal ring that is on the outside of the tripod (inner CV) of the axle I removed (and also my driver's side axle).

These are pictures of my the ring on the axle I took off:

<img src="http://www.h2net.net/~mgbrown/images/axle/1.jpg" alt=" - " />

<img src="http://www.h2net.net/~mgbrown/images/axle/2.jpg" alt=" - " />

Does anyone have any information on the purpose of this ring? Does this sound like a reasonable diagnosis of the cause of the problem?

I'm really bummed because we're going to have to do this whole thing over again. (Plus my wife is without transportation again.)

The lesson here might be to really study re-manufactured axles to make sure everything looks correct before you install them. (I'm surprised we missed this, because we were studying them pretty deliberately tonight, comparing them to a Tacoma axle Jeff had brought with him.)

<small>[ April 17, 2003, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Aurora Sandman ]</small>