Next we were off to the guys at Gears & Rears to get our trucks 12 bolt rear end rebuilt. These guys know their stuff for sure. The technician Rod has been doing this for over 20 years and was a wealth of knowledge. I learned A LOT about differentials while I was there. This is something that needs to be left to professionals; I wouldn’t trust a back yard guy to do this. Go and see them.

Rod took the time to take everything a part carefully, inspect every part while taking notes and measurements about what was inside the housing. Someone had been inside it before and took a few short cuts with shims and some other parts.

Cool Tool TIP: An old deep fryer basket makes for the perfect holder for the parts to be put into the solvent tank.

All of our new parts for the rear end were supplied by Gears & Rears. We are using a Detroit Truetrac posi from Eaton, a Quality Gear install kit, National bearings and Quality Gear axles. With our housing gutted it’s time for a steam bath to get it all clean. When assembling a rear end, a shop press is a much better option then a 2x4 and a hammer. Rod used it to  press all of the bearings onto the posi. You want to make sure that everything has the right torque and load applied is something that only a professional has the tools and skills to do.

Our Baer rear brake caliper mounts installed along with the National Bearings. There is one thing I learned is don’t cheap out on bearings. If you can get OEM ones, they are better then anything else (but aren't made anymore) because they are original and designed to work perfectly with the housing. If you can’t get them get something like National, don't cheap out here at all. Once again, Rod used the shop press to install our wheel studs into our Quality Gear axles.

If need rear end or transmission work done, you need to go see these guys. We will be taking our Ford 9" for Project Stress Relief to them to have it all assembled.