Quote:
Originally Posted by s13pimp
Okay, this will probably seem like a stupid question, But I was wondering if I could get away without replacing the side oil seals. I'm having a tough time finding them for a reasonable price.  |
You can probably get away with that, I've had diffs with 300000km and more on them and they never leaked from the output shaft seals. IIRC they are pretty cheap at the dealer though.
Also, when trying to swap over the diff, this is what you can try.
Set up a table divided into two sides, put your old diff on the left, and the s15 diff on the right.
Drain oil first obviously, take off the front covers, pull out the shafts. Place the shafts from each diff on left and ride side respectfully where they came frmo on each diff (yes they are all going to be different).
Take off bearing caps, place them respectfully from which side of the pumpkin on each pumpkin they came off of. And remember to mark which way they were bolted on, do NOT flip them over they have to go on exact way they came off.
The carrier will not just fall out of the pumpkin when you take off the bearing caps, you will need to pry it gently against the top of the pumpkin with some light tapping force.
When the carrier starts to slip out, be very careful as the shims and bearings(round tapered rings) will try to fall out from behind the bearings, put the shims respectfully to the sides of the carrier they came off of.
Once you have it all apart on both diffs on both sides of your table, take the ring gears off with an impact gun, undo them in a 2-3 step procedure with a criss-cross pattern. Make sure not to mix up the ring gears and ring gear bolts as well.
When you have just the carriers sitting there, put them on a flat suface ring gear mounting area facing up, and look at them from the side to ensure that they are perfectly at the same level, if they are not, then you will have to re-shim the diffs. You can check this by putting a ruler across from one diff to the other on the ring gear moutning surface and see if it lies flat on both sides of ramps across from one to the other.
They will most likely be identical, so if they are this is what you can do.
Take the carriers and swap them on your table; hence, you will have EVERYTHING you took apart from your stock diff on one side of the table BUT with the s15 carrier, and everything you took apart from the s15 diff on the other side of the table but with your stock carrier.
Now, assemble it all exactly as it was in your stock diff but with the s15 carrier. This includes retaining the original stock ring gear, shims and their locations, bearings, bearing caps, and torquing everything to spec.
Torque the ring gear to fsm spec in a cross cross pattern in 2 or 3 steps, make sure the bolts and holes are clean from debris and oil, use brake cleaner to clean them and put on LOCKTYTE red before assembling.
Torque the bearing caps to fsm specs, also use LOCKTYTE and make sure everything is clean.
When you are done assembling it all, take a marker and colour in a couple of teeth on the ring gear, spin the diff a couple of times, and you should see where the teeth contact. It should contact in an oval shape manner in the CENTER of each tooth, not to the sides, not up and down. If you are unsure the FSM has a picture of how it should look like. If its a little bit to one side or the other, then you will need to shim it accordingly.
I hope this could help.