In this pic I have just removed the cover and am getting ready to clean out all the gear oil. Some say it's better to remove the gear assembly to weld it better but it looks simple enough to weld it in place so that's what I chose to do.
This is just a further away pic just after removing the cover and draining the gear oil.
Now it's all cleaned up. You can see it's not shinny anymore. I noticed some play in the gears so welding them up will get rid of that problem. I will probably notice less of a clunk when shifting into forward and reverse. Yet to be seen or should I say yet to be not heard.
Ok here we go. Notice the extra metal in there? In this pic all the welding is done which only took about ten minutes. This thing is now a one piece unit.
Here are some other closer shots.
Now my rear differential has a little attitude problem. I can't wait to take it out and see what she can do. I know this is going to be a fine addition to "Woooooof"s upgrade plan. Stay tuned for the after drive report.
I welded my rear differential today (21 July 2002) and here are the pictures of this great adventure. This is my AMC20 differential with 3.32 gears. I tried to find a spool for it without any luck so I decided to weld it together. This process has been known as a Lincoln Locker for a long time for the simple reason that that's what kind of welder which was most or maybe first used to perform the task. This took about 3 hours to do. That includes all the time required to properly clean the gears and paint the cover.
