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Diff oil and additive - hammering diff

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Old Nov 15, 2025 | 10:15 AM
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Default Diff oil and additive - hammering diff

Just to leave this here.... I had an issue. I went to annual car inspection and they said all is well except the rear wheel bearings. You could hear them clicking and feel the binding. It turned out it weren't the bearings at all. When they grabed the rear wheel at 12' and 6' the wheel was moving but not on the bearing, the trailing arm bushings were shot.

In any case I ordered everything. Bushings, tools, spacers, hardware, cotter pins and castle nuts, inner and outer bearings, races, new grease....everything down to the micrometer gauge with magnet stand.




Disassembly went hard. I had to run to tool shop and buy a powersaw because drinker's side trailing arm bolt rusted within the bushing so bad, only thing left was to cut it.








Rebuild went pretty straight forward. No surprises. I rebuilt everything successfully.


Now the big reveal and... the noise didn't go away. It still felt like metal shredder chewing my first bicycle. While surfing for a solution I've stumbled upon a video from some guy explaining the diff chatter on a ford. Crucial info was when he said that he had situations where it was a slight clicking noise all the way to what felt like hammering the axles sideways. That's exactly how mine felt. Also vital part of the puzzle was listening which side the noise came from.
Put it in Drive and steer slightly to the left, left side hammered. Put it straight, no noise. Turn it slightly to the right, now the hammering was on the right axle. It felt like the entire rear end was having constant side curb crashes.

I forgot to remember I've took out the old 80w90 and put 75w140 LSD oil in the diff. I took it all out again, put good ol' but new 80w90 inside and a bottle of Mopar LSD additive since AC Delco stuff isn't available here. It worked like a charm. Who would have thought that binding of the plates is so powerfull and that 4oz of some friction modifier liquid (95% of it is actually a phosphoric acid) can solve such a big problem. It's quiet as a 45 year old diff can be. I'm super pleased. Also I took it for the alignment within a modern shop with the mechanic who took my car as a challenge since he never even saw one, let alone worked on it. It is a marvolous, dart like experience to drive it now. (not Dodge, the game I mean)

All I'm trying to say is that Mopar stuff works in Corvette posi, confirmed.

Last edited by CubeBrick; Nov 16, 2025 at 12:38 PM.
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