Front 10 Bolt Teardown / Rebuild PICTURES!

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10 BOLT YOKE REMOVAL / HOW TO YOKE PINION GEAR

To remove the yoke, your going to need an air gun, extension and a 1 1/4" socket. I dont have any good pneumatic tools so dont joke. I had to borrow my neighbors air gun to get the job done.

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10 BOLT PINION GEAR REMOVAL / HOW TO REMOVE PINION GEAR

With the yoke nut removed, you can pull the entire yoke right off. Now put the nut back onto the pinon bolt so you dont ruin the threads and get you a mallet and swing away. Once you get the pinion loose, unscrew the nut and pull the entire pinion right out. The crush sleeve and the main pinion bearing should be the only things that come out attached onto the pinion. Mmm crusty pinion seal. And then a shot of what your axle housing should look like without the pinion. Axle is nearly stripped down.

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Alright so now we are going to remove the pinion seal. This is a fairly easy task. All you will need is a punch/prybar and a mallet. Take the prybar and pull the seal out of the seat. Your pretty much going to destroy the seal. Beneath the seal is going to be your second pinion bearing. This was only kept in by the seal so you can now remove it by just reaching in and pulling it out. So next we will remove the inner axle shaft seals.

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Alright so these are the last 2 seals on the axle. The 2 axle shaft seals are located on each side of the axle housing. These I wont be removing so i dont have any detailed pictures but they are taken out the same was as the pinion seal.

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So the very last step to completely tear down this axle is going to be the removal of both of the pinion bearing races. We are going to start with the biggest one first. The FIRST and SECOND picture shows the race which is located right on the inside of the axle housing. To remove, grab your trusty punch and mallet and tap it from the back. In the FORTH picture we are looking through where the yoke sits and you will see that there is 2 exposed parts of the race, one on right and left, specifically designed for tapping it out. So get your punch and hit it from there. The FIFTH picture shows how to position your punch in the right hole to tap on the back of the race.

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Now we are going to tap out the second bearing race which sits right behind the yoke seal [PICTURE 1]. Looking from inside the axle housing toward the yoke you can see this race has those 2 areas exposed just as the first one did [PICTURE 2]. Position your punch like this and it should come right out [PICTURE 3].

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Alright well the entire axle is completely torn apart and all that is left is a big hunk of metal. Now i realize i didnt have any pictures of the pinion assembly so as an apology I arranged a "schematic" of the pinion assembly and labeled each seperate part with an assigned character. They are as follows:
A- Yoke retaining nut
B- Yoke
C- Yoke/ Pinion seal
D- Outer pinion bearing and race
E- Pinion crush sleave
F- Inner pinion bearing race
G- Inner pinion bearing
H- Pinion

[ERASER5]

Counting the cover bolts is a common misconception. Look at the ring gear. There are 10 bolts holding the ring gear in place. That makes it a 10 bolt. The GM12 bolt has 12 bolts on the ring gear. The 14 bolt like wise. Other rear ends are a toss up. BOP rears has some 10 bolts with 12 bolts on the cover. This made for some real disappointment.