The differential on my jeep was making noise when I bought it, the lot I bought it from has always honored any repairs we discussed while test driving and luckily I noticed noise from the rear end. When the mechanic opened it up I was standing there and he reached up, grabbed the carrier and shook it in every conceivable direction, every bearing in the rear end was sloppy. The oil he drained out of it was nasty and metal had damaged everything. We wound up agreeing to pulling a donor out of a wrecking yard and installing it, the new one looks great, had clean oil and should have a lot of miles left but it is just a regular differential, no limited slip. Since this is a 2WD highway rig that should be fine. My question is how common are problems with the D35?

 

Problems usually arise with oversize tires. Stock they aren't that bad unless you neglect to change the diff fluid and keep it properly full.

On the LSD axles you need a friction modifier additive in addition to the gear oil. Perhaps some PO forgot this and that is what brought about the demise of your axle.

 

Thanks, I am going to pick it up this afternoon. Like any used vehicle I have a list of things I need to do to it.

 

No friction modifier would just make the limited slip not work very well, wouldnt destroy the axle.

 

I have been told that without friction modifier the clutches in the LSD will grab and release abruptly instead of smoothly engaging. I would imagine that this constant grab/release cycle would put a hell of a shock load on the internals of the diff.

I doubt it would do much damage in the short term but if the LSD was run with straight gear oil for years and years then it might cause some problems.

 

I think that is what happened to this one. Rear end is quiet now so I will wait and see.

 

I have a factory lsd in my zj and when the oil was low and old every time I turned I would get a horrible grinding growling sound so I opened it up cleaned it and used lucas gear oil and some friction modifier and its as good as new