80 for sale on Ebay

[StarCruiser]

Nice one Billy. Thing is these trucks do last and take a fair bit of neglect and abuse before being even close to failure.

Sounds like you're doing a front axle rebuild. There's plenty of info on here about that. Key points being to put genuine Toyota inner seals in. There's rebuild kits available with pivot bearings and all the outer seals etc.
If you want to go the new genuine route then Amayama.com do new genuine parts for far less than Mr T here.

If you're not familiar with the adjustments and preloads etc then a read of the thread on here should help you as it's worth doing right. It's also likely to want both sides doing. Wheel bearing preload is in a thread by Julian Voelker, his method beng most successful.

Are yours the short or long splines on the CVs?
I have a pair of hardened after market short ones from Oz I could send you if you get stuck.

 

[Billy Williams]

Thanks for the info and the offer of help. I will read up on it and if I need more help I'll come back, cheers again.

 

[Chris]

I know what you mean. I had a front diff that whined. Drove me nuts. There's more than backlash to set up. That's not really the main cause of whine. It could be bearings or it could be wear in the ring and pinion.

 

[frank rabbets]

It's an assumption that the stray grease ruins the dif. However if true it would not happen if the owners followed the instructions in the owners hand book. Quite simple really. Change dif oil every 36k miles. I changed mine at this mileage from new. I wondered for years why it always came out milky looking.

I also think the grease would have no effect if at least the oil level was kept up as oil draining into the hubs may lower the level too much.

 

[Chris]

Problem is though Frank, this damage occurred a long time ago. 20 year old trucks have often had a dozen owners and I suspect that the original owners who went to Mr T for their servicing and warranty work may not have kept them til that 36k mile mark or much beyond anyway and subsequent owners probably didn't want to pay Toyota prices. Whilst the engine oil and filter probably had good attention, it's unlikely that ABC Motors even considered looking in the diffs.

I can't say for sure that swivel grease ruins the diff, but I am pretty sure it ruins the oil. And that in turn leads to poor lubrication performance. When you pull the plug and nothing comes out, you know it's either empty or turned to porridge. Once I had to warm a diff up with a blow torch to get the grease to start to come out of the drain hole.

 

[frank rabbets]

That's all very true Chris so it must be harder and harder to find an 80 that doesn't need serious work done on it. Obviously if the dif is full of lubrication but it's all pebble dashed round the inside of the casing that's going to ruin the dif.

I ran a rebuilt car once without putting any oil in the dif and it got noisy in about 2 miles then even worse on the 2 miles back home. After spending 1500 hours on the rebuild I could not believe what I'd done. I put a mixture of EP 90 and molyslip in and although noisy that car went on to do another 100,000 miles o the same dif.