I'm going to attempt to replace my heavily leaking pinion seal this weekend on my 96 GC. I've never done one before but it doesn't sound too hard from all the threads I've looked over. Can anyone offer any tips? Should I replace the crush sleeve as well?

 

You shouldn't need a crush sleeve unless you're replacing the bearings as well. Just get the free-wheeling torque-to-turn no more and 1 in/lb more than you had already.

 

no I don't think I'm going to replace the bearings.

 

So the part store offers two different pinion seals for my jeep. How do I know before getting the old one out, which one I will need?

 

One's for the D35 and the other is for the D44.

 

Gotcha. Do you know what size the pinion nut is?

 

Finally got around to doing this today. I think it went well but I marked the pinion nut with a paint marker and the socket rubbed off all the paint so I examined the nut carefully and think I saw a bit of the mark left so I used that and drew the mark again. I'm a little worried but it drives okay and isn't noisy. I did also have a little trouble getting the u joint to seat back into the pinion nicely but as I tightened the straps, it went into place.