... was wrong.

We thought we blew our front diff a couple weekends ago but...

I took it to my buddy's shop today and we drained a bit of front diff fluid before doing anything else and it looked like Grade "A" Vermont maple syrup. Definitely not the diff.

So we bolted the hubs and front prop shaft back up and drove it on/off road, center locked/unlocked, and in some deep mud in all gears and ranges. It all seems fine.

There was a golfball-sized rock that had been tossing about in the front belly pan and there's some scoring on the inboard pass CV joint. Perhaps that's all it was after all.

I think we're good to go for a bit. I won't be so quick to "know" what's wrong next time ;-)

Dan, I totally agree that it was the right, if inconvenient, decision to make. Had we pulled the pans to remove the front prop shaft however (which I should have known to do on a full-time AWD), we likely would have found the real culprit. As you said, I'll be more skeptical next time. I've read too many horror stories. We all post the bad stuff, not the my-diff-didn't-break-today stories.

An ARB front locker almost ruined the tire budget. We could have pushed them out and done a locker (but not a regear if it was needed), but happily it is now riding on some new shoes: 255/85/16 BFG KM2s. And we're going to be able to make the BB weekend. WooHoo![

Hoping to use some winter down-time/budget to re-gear from 4.3:1 -> 4.88:1 and lock both the front and rear. We'll see how that goes...

"Summer" is not over indeed Craig!

Cheers,

joe