Welded my diff yesterday while in the casing and after it was rough AF to spin. We figured there were metal shavings from the welds using degreaser and now it won't spin at all. We took apart the input shaft and as we tighten that down all the way it gets harder to turn until it stops turning completely once it's tightened all the way down. Is it possible that it has shavings in it or is the input shaft not supposed to be tightened down all the way?

 

Well..
Degreaser does not remove welding slag.

The pinion shaft has a preload on the bearings. Tightening it all the way will bind the bearings. You may have screwed it up, you'll have to look in the FSM and see the process for setting the preload. You may also need to reset the gear backlash if you want it correct.

It may just make a ton of noise when you reinstall it.

 

I believe from the factory these differentials use a 'collapsible spacer' to take up pinion shaft end play. If you take the pinion out, you have to replace the collapsible spacer with a new one. But now that you have taken it apart and put it back together, you need to set the pinion depth, pre-load, and backlash, of course after putting in a new collapsible spacer. If you want to eliminate this from happening again, put the new collapsible spacer in, set the differential up correctly, then tear it back down and have a custom 'non-collapsible' spacer made the same length as your now theoretically correct spacer.

A non-collapsible spacer can eliminate a potential weakness. I've heard that under some racing conditions the collapsible spacer can become shorter over time when the differential is subjected to extreme shock loads (I believe under deceleration.) This would cause the pinion to have excessive end-play and eventually wear the gears out or in extreme cases break.

 

Time to buy a new diff.

 

Probably distorted the carrier from to much heat/weld.

 

**** thanks guys, I'll try to get it working. But I didn't see any slag in there and I doubt any went in there. I'll update you guys in a couple days. Don't have money for a new diff so I'll prolly end up selli the car tbh.

 

you can get an NA diff for like 100 bucks

 

I fail to see how "Let's weld the diff" leads to "Let's sell the car with a ruined diff." You can get a good used diff for cheap; probably even an LSD. Then if you still want to sell the car, you can at least get a little more out of it.

 

"Im just so tired of dealing with this car. It always breaks and i put so much money into it, like 150 bucks"

 

Lol!

 

Yesterday I had to put GAS in it....

 

You sure you welded it right? Let's see pictures.
I don't see why you had to take it apart to weld it..

I still have mine, if you can figure out how to get it, you can have it.