Same thing happened to my driveshaft and I bent the bracket over a little and its been fine since.

 

Awesome. That's exactly what I did. It seems to be working.

Thanks!

Hmm, I think the next major thing is trutrac installation.

 

So I've had an oil leak since I've done the transmission and transfercase swap.

I haven't driven the truck much since I've completed everything. I discovered it had an oil leak and pretty much parked it.

I finally had a chance to take a look today.

I took the plastic shields off and took a look.



I was happy to find that there was no oil above the front differential.

I cleaned off all the oil and wondered where it could be leaking. The CV joint side seemed fine and where the passengers axle housing joined the differential seemed okay, but was oily.

I jacked the front end up so I could turn the tires.

I discovered a crack.



I couldn't really get a good pic of it but if you look closely you can see the crack. It's about 4 inches long and goes from where that drip is to the bolt on the other side.

Tomorrow I'll take apart the axle housing.

I'll have to go junkyard shopping or look and see how much the axle housing and gaskets would be from GM.

 

Check out what I found on Craigslist today.



Oddly enough, I found both of these from the same guy. Both are 3.73 ratio. The one on the left is a good runner the one on the right needs bearings.

I'm going to see if I can hybrid them together. I'm hoping I can just pull the longer axle and housing off and bolt it onto the 4wd version.

 

I wondered how the 4x4 actuator actually worked. So I took it apart.



It's a lot more complicated than I assumed.



The poor man's way of engaging 4WD without having the transfer case and all of the appropriate wiring still connected, would be to turn this until the actuator is fully extended.



Like so.



So I took the long axle and housing off of the AWD unit. I used a combination of a slide hammer and a dead blow hammer to pop the axle free.

You can see here there is a groove in the axle. There is a detent in the spider gear that locks it into place.



In case you were wondering how the 4x4 actually engaged. You can see how it pushes that fork over causing the fork to slide that collar over, joining the two axle halves.



This is looking down into the 4WD unit.



This is down into the AWD unit.



You can barely make it out, but there is a silver clip in there that snaps the long axle half into there.

So this means that it's not as simple as just unbolting the longer axle and tube, and then bolt that onto a 4WD front end.

For grins, I did see if it would fit, and it does. There's just no way for the longer axle to lock into place. The spline count is the same, and it's the correct length.

Now, I could bolt it in. The CV's would probably keep that front axle where it needs to be. What I'm going to do through, is just lock the 4WD unit into 4WD, then replace my cracked factory one.

In the coming months, I'll tear apart my AWD unit and rebuild it.

 

Here are both axle assemblies side by side. The overall length of the housing and axle are the same.



What I think I'm going to do is put the AWD one piece axle and housing onto the 4WD unit. I know there's a difference in the spider gears between the two. I've considered it, and I don't think it matters. After thinking about it, I think that the only reason there a detent holding in the AWD one piece axle is for the assembly plant. There's enough force from the CV joints to keep it in place.

I found out where my front end was leaking. LOL.

 

Is there a part or casting number on the 4x4 part that is cracked??? if the OBS style one is the same, there plentiful out here.

 

I've got an extra. I picked up 2 extra front ends. I'm just planning on using the one piece long axle for simplicities sake.

 

I cleaned off the mating surfaces really well with brake cleaner.





I applied some RTV black and put the two pieces together. Then I put the bolts on finger tight. Then I let it set up for about 20 to 30 minutes. Then I tightened everything down.



So now all I have to do is figure out how to get the center link to come free. I have to work tonight so I didn't have anymore time to mess with it.

 

Looks good, how does one crack an axle tube like that ?? You been doing some off-roading in your lowered truck ;-)