Replacing D35 spider gears? (searched)

'91 XJ, D-35 with 195K miles.

I changed the oil in the rear differential, and I noticed that there seems to be a chip missing on one of the teeth on one of the spider gears.

Is it difficult to replace the spiders? Do I need special tools?

Is this something that can wait a little while?

What should I also do while I'm in there?

Thanks!!

spider gears are way easy, at least the two on the outside (the ones the axle shafts actually go into) if you remove the center pin and the axle shafts, you can rotate the other spiders until these just drop out. at that point I think the top and bottom spider gears will just drop out too. I found this out when taking an axle shaft out once. Really easy once the diff is apart.

Really common on these rear ends. It's easy to change, as mentioned above...but beware this is usually caused by a warped carrier. You could spend the $$ to replace the spiders only to have them do it again shortly.

Check the cross shaft for play in it. It should not wobble around in its holes... If it does then you've most likely got a warped carrier.

Is a chipped spider gear an emergency? Or can I let it go for a while?

Anybody? Is it an emergency, or can I drive it like this for a while?

montanaman said:

Anybody? Is it an emergency, or can I drive it like this for a while?

Click to expand...

It's a tuff call...the problem is that if another chip occurs, or the chip is still floating around in the dif, it can get lodged between two other gears and blow the whole carrier out. If that happens you're not going anywhere real fast. And chances are decent that you'll do damage to your pumpkin. Personally, I'd say change it asap but I'm sure there will be at least one person that has driven for 10k miles with bad spiders and tell you different =)