Finally got the chance to pull the cover off of the rear differential. As I started loosening the bolts, I got a few drips of oil coming out. As I went around and got the rest of the bolts loosened up, I pulled the cover to break the gasket seal. One little "plop" of oil came out. Man, that stuff smelled HORRIBLE!!! Holy smokes it was bad! Almost to the point that I was about to roll out from under the truck to get away from it. Luckily, I had a fan going, and it helped push the fumes away.
Anyway, there was hardly any fluid in the housing. No wonder the gears were banging and clanging.
I rotated everything around as best as I could to look at all the gears and the teeth. Everything looked good. I didn't see any metal in the bottom of the housing, nothing came out with the fluid. No marks on the gears or the teeth, that I could see. I used a few cans of break cleaner to spray everything down and get all of the old lube out of the housing.
I cleaned up the cover, scraped off all of the old RTV gasket that was on both faces. Gave the cover a coat of Orange paint and added some new gasket maker RTV to it, let it set up for a little bit, then re-installed the cover.
Last night, I took the truck for a little test drive. NO MORE NOISES!! Everything seemed to work just fine - as far as the rear end goes!! I'm super pumped that it wasn't anything else. All I needed was a little oil back there and all is good! So far, I haven't seen any drips or leaks, so I'm hoping I'm good to go for a while.
