Rant/Question: WTF is up with the rearends in these cars????

[FordMan77]

Backstory- the rear in my 03 LX Sport ate the pass. side outer axle and bearing on the stock rear. Not surprised after hearing about the soft axle issue on the 03 cars. Replaced the bearing and axle/fluids and drove fine for quite a while. It eventually ate itself again and I decided instead of rebuilding the POS 28 spline open rear that I would look for a newer 31 spline trac loc rear. Found one out of an 2011 with 80K~ish miles on it with the 3.27 trac loc. Went through the hassle of getting it in and installed all new fluid with friction mod. as required and it drove nice and smooth again like it should.

Fast forward to last week when my wife said there was a strange noise coming from the car and a vibration in the pedals/floorboard. Stopped driving it and took a look at the front end as the wheel hubs were suspect now at 180K. Fixed a few unrelated things and the wheel hubs seem fine. Get the rear in the air and spin everything. Nothing sounds weird so I check for play in the axles just for the heck of it. Drivers side has minimal play that I would expect at approx. 95K on the newer axle. Get to the pass. side and it's got just as much play in the outer bearing as the old axle did when I yanked it out. I can't believe it's not leaking yet. Pulled it off the jack and just grabbed a beer in disgust.

Can someone here please explain to me why in the hell these rear axles suck so bad? I understand the issue with the earlier ones, but damn Ford, come on. By 2011 you said you had this fixed yet here I am again with the SAME FUCKING ISSUE!!! How in the hell do you screw up such a reliable 8.8 rear when you have been making them for decades!!! I love the car but I am so sick of putting so much money and time into fixing the rear axle on it.

So once again I have to drain the carrier, check for metal in the fluid, yank the pass. axle out and see how bad it really is, which likely means I will have to pull the entire rear out from under it again, send it to a shop to be completely cleaned out to avoid metal shavings from chewing up the rest, install all new bearings and axles on both sides and then bolt it all back in and hope I can get more than another 20K out of it before it grenades itself. Man, the axle in my 84 only had outer bearings put in it ONCE in the 400K+ miles on it. Just regular fluid changes and it's still happy to this day. Guess they really don't make things like they used to. I need another beer...

[Tiggie]

I've got no real explaination for you other than bean counters at Ford may have found a way to save .3 cents on every car out the line by changing something in the rear.

I'd like to know the made in USA/Canada percent on the 84 vs 11 axle.

[Kodachrome Wolf]

I haven't done anything to my rear axle outside of a fluid change over 10K ago with 75W-140 gear oil. It leaks nothing, and nothing hums. It has 176.5K on it at the current moment.

[87gtVIC]

accident history on your vehicle?


Maybe things are out of wack and creating excessive wear on the rear bearing in question.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

How in the hell do you screw up such a reliable 8.8 rear when you have been making them for decades!!!

Bean counters wanted a cheaper part, which can only be achieved if is made of inferior materials. Ever seen ring gear teeth chip from simply tapping into the pinion during diff install? Same reason there. If you like the car spring for some nice aftermarket axle shafts, gonna cost you about the same now as pulling the housing and having the shop redo it again later if another factory axle fucks up on you.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

accident history on your vehicle?


Maybe things are out of wack and creating excessive wear on the rear bearing in question.

There is that as well.

[jaywish]

If the bearing went I would replace the axle. There are repair bearings but the failure rate is an open question to many.

Are you reasonably experienced and detail oriented? If you have the necessary tools, i.e. garage, jack stands, torque wrenches & bearing puller, to remove the carrier, side bearings and axle bearings you can clean the housing yourself with the axle housing in the car. "saving money"

Pull brakes, remove axles, axle bearings, carrier "don"t mix up the parts, read instructions first" & side bearings. Then clean the housing. Reinstall everything, with new axle, axle bearings, seals and fluid, following the correct instructions.

Allow plenty of time.

[FordMan77]

As far as I know it was never in an accident and everything back/under there looked factory when I pulled the factory axle out from under it. No sheetmetal repair or frame issues that I saw and I actually gave it a good look since I had everything out of the way. All the watts links lined back up on the new axle with no force. Just slid right in and bolted back up. I was more concerned about screwing up the airbags than anything, lol.

I will be going with aftermarket axles at this point. Not sure if Moser or Strange makes any but I'll be looking. As far as pulling it apart myself the farthest I've even been into one was to get the axle out of the old one and install the new outer bearing. I don't like the idea of the repair bearing. I've never removed a carrier, but I did have a spider gear slip out once that I was able to walk back into place. The only thing I'd be concerned about would be getting the axle tubes cleaned out. Center isn't an issue obviously.

I'd have to see how the carrier comes out of one of these before I decide. Sometimes it's money well spent to have a pro do this kind of work and I'm really not wanting to do it all over again if I f something up. Still haven't told the wife, lol.. Gonna do some research before I break that news again. F'n bean counters

[jaywish]

If the housing is empty. Lots of rags and brake cleaner do the trick. I just used a broom handle to push the rags through. Kind of like cleaning a gun barrel. Also I jacked one side of the housing up a bit to drain as much oil as possible before really cleaning.

[gadget73]

No real need to pull the carrier to swap the axle and bearing. You have to pull the cross pin to get the C clip out, but thats it. You can pull it if you want, but I wouldn't.

[jaywish]

Just thinking it makes it easier to clean everything but you are right it could be done leaving it all in there.

[FordMan77]

Thanks gadget. I've pulled the cross pin out before to get the old axle out of the 28 spine unit I had. Might still have a new pin from Ford since I think I bought 2 of them. If I can find a way to do this without pulling the entire carrier out that would be great. Not that I don't think I can figure it out, but the more stuff I take out the higher my chances of messing it up. As long as the carrier bearings are good I'm thinking I'll just replace both axles with some quality aftermarket ones and do both axle bearings/seals and call it good. I'll clean the living daylights out of it beforehand of course.

Thanks for the tips on cleaning it out. Doesn't sound as bad as I expected. PITA to yank the rear out again but whatever I guess. I just want it to last. I actually have the shipping pallet that it was delivered on so I'll probably just put it back on that and then add some wood to one side to tilt it and clean it out. Should be stable enough to not drop the carrier or other parts out of the center while messing with it. Then just slap it all back together again and off the pallet and back under it goes.

Question is, if I leave the carrier and whatnot in there, can I clean that out with the brake cleaner as well? I don't want to screw up the trac-loc or anything. I can use my air compressor to blow it all out to dry it off but never messed with the trac-loc before.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Yeah you can hit the Trac-Lok with the spray can cleaner, no problem there - it's not like you're soaking it, just rinsing it out. I usually do that with carb cleaner, not brake cleaner, but I have an acquired aversion of brake cleaner due to welding (brake cleaner residue + argon shielding gas = some nasty WWI poison gas), so I suppose you can use the brake cleaner if that's what you prefer.

[jaywish]

Still using the chlorine based brake cleaner? I stopped using that.

You don't need to remove the carrier from the car if you are not in the mood for that.

[gadget73]

The non-chlorine stuff is horrible to breathe though. Its all we can get in NJ now. I'd rather use acetone, its also cheaper per quantity. I bought a gallon of the stuff when I was painting the lathe for under 10 bucks on sale.