Second time for the infamous driver side differential leak to afflict my car. First time was about 10 years ago and the Chevy dealer did the work, as the car was still under extended warranty coverage. This time, I am tackling the repair. I also suspected my driver side rear wheel bearing of being bad, as I get creaking/groans from it while driving in reverse. So two birds with one stone, as they say.

1) Disassemble driver rear suspension by removing caliper, rotor, parking brake bracket, tie rod connection, shock, and upper and lower ball joints so I can remove the entire spindle from the car.



2) Remove axle shaft from differential. Examine the evidence. Yep -- bad leak right here



3) Removed the failed seal



4) Cleaned up the surface on the diff and installed a new seal. I got mine from Rock Auto. It is the GM OEM seal, but the new design they came out with several years ago.





You can see the old seal on the left compared to the new seal on the right



5) Now let's have a look at that wheel bearing. Think the bearing is bad? It looks fine to me!





So I am now waiting on a new wheel bearing and new axle nut to arrive from Rock Auto so I can finish the repair and bolt everything back together. Should get it done this weekend or next week. Happy to have found and fixed both problems!

 

Good job and write up and picks. Thanks

 

Thanks for the write up. Is a leak like this normally the axle seal, or could it be the cover seal? The shop manual shows an O ring for the cover seal, and since it's static I wouldn't expect that to leak much. I just want to be prepared before I start taking things apart.

 

The cover seals rarely leak, its generally the axle seal. As you said the cover seal is a static piece that unless it somehow dried out, isnt likely to need replacing in the normal course of operation.

If you get in there and determine its a cover seal o-ring, they arent very expensive, but they are a specialty part. Im not sure you could pull that seal without dropping the cradle and at a minimum dropping the driveline down at an angle to get room to work. Not a bad evolution, but takes an additional hour or so to pull the cradle.