[special-K]

I'm curious and would like to hear from anyone who has or any comments you mechanics have after all you have seen. Has anyone else seen a differential so cruddied up or had it prevent assembly? I mean if you tapped the axle flange with a hammer it would ring like it was solid metal to metal. Before I tore into it everything was working fine. The posi operated as it was designed and all that. I know because or the way I became fully aware I had no rear brakes.

This had me freaked out for a while. It was like nothing I had ever experience in driving before:

It had just dumped rain during a thunderstorm while I was in Walmart, the roads still wet with water laying in low spots. I make a right from a stop sign, light on the throttle, it shifts to second and the rear end is coming around I guess the road was greasy. Wasn't going very fast yet, I turned into it, but didn't square up, just kept sliding diagonally toward the other side of the road where it dropped off 3' or so into an untilled crop field. There was a sign post in my path so I used the brakes which seemed to do make it worse. I figure the rear wheels were still spinning away. Remember, this is a posi so that's both wheels and still trying to come around since the front brakes were binding. At this point it was slide into the road sign broadside or head the truck straight into the field over the drop-off. I feared I'd roll it if I hit it sideways, especially sliding. I romped over the drop-off into the field heading toward the treeline at a slight incline. Brakes where about useless on the muddy soil with only front brakes. The incline was the biggest help. So now I'm sitting at the edge of the field facing uphill and it hit me, my lockouts (Selectro) were not functioning due to needing an obsolete part I've been searching for. I back it in a j-turn to get it parallel to the top of the field facing the road to traverse my way over. Of course, the posi was taking the rear sideways but I crabbed it to the road throwing dual rooster tails of mud. I was grateful for that posi or I'd be stuck there. That's how I found out the rear brakes weren't grabbing and that the posi certainly was fully functional. This shook me up because the truck reacted so oddly, as if I was going twice as fast, and that's what had me white knuckle freaked out driving it home. It was scary! All good now.