Glad to hear you're making headway!

Thanks for keeping us posted.

 

For lenghts longer than calipers I use rulers/tape measurers that I measure with the caliper and sum the numbers. .8 of a difference is pretty small and hard to measure.

 

Definitely! It’s a long process, since I tacked on extra work with the bushing, rust removal, sourcing bolts, anodizing, painting, grinding down broken things, tapping out ground studs, part delivery etc.

I think it’s more of a specialty thing. I’ll run the diff the way it is. Maybe he measured it out without me noticing. I can do a full rebuild and he will calibrate all tolerances down for $500. Parts not included. So for around 700 I can have all new bearings, and seals, and he will bring it all back to minimum tolerances. I’ll drop the cash if I need to down the road. Or I’ll grab an LSD and have him do a rebuild on that. Fresh clutches, yes please.

Napa axles were horrid. Gotta take em back since upon inspection they had more play than my old ones. I’m going to have to hit the salvage yard on Friday to grab an axle, Comes with a warranty for exchange incase it doesn’t work out and it’s about $40 so not too bad. I’ll grab a few more things while I’m there depending upon the shape of the vehicle.

We pushed the diff back up in there, got the driveshaft reconnected today. Got the sway bar back in (think I’m going to need to upgrade this), and the links. Started on rust treatment for the passenger axle, seeing as how I have decided to reuse the unit since I saw firsthand how bad aftermarket axles are. Got the exhaust ground down to accommodate a new gasket, and stainless steel bolts and nuts.

For anyone interested, or that stumbles upon this post later down the road:

Torque Specs:
Rear Diff Bushing 17mm Nut - 81Ft Lbs
Front Diff Bushing x 2 17mm Bolt - 71 ft lbs
DriveShaft (6 hole 8mm Allen type) - 55 ft lbs

I ended up strapping the front of the diff and tightening up the slack while my helper jacked up the rear end of the diff on the rear end Jack location. I ended up needing to tilt it with the front down, to get a small amount of the rear bushing stud into it. We slid the driveshaft onto the yoke at this point, got it lined up properly and got the bolts in loose. Once that was in we lifted the front while pushing back slowly, tightening the strap upon lift. It took a while but we got it in safely. We just had to make sure that we didn’t have too much pressure on the driveshaft to front connection, didn’t want to damage anything.

I made sure to mark my driveshaft to be safe, though it should be independently balanced, didn’t want to chance it being off. Pushed the front up and bolted it in hand tight. Torqued down the rear bushing and then the fronts. We reused the metal plates on the bottom since the bolt looked like it would hold the steel bushing sleeve, but not the bushing itself, as in, over time it might slip loose leaving behind the sleeve and the torqued down bolt.

More to come…

 

So we have a successful completion.

Found a g25 at the local salvage yard, took the rear driver axle. $40, and grabbed the sway bar while I was there. I wanted to take the passenger rear axle as well, unfortunately it looked like someone drilled through the seal? I pulled the axle off the carrier and gear oil shot out. Decided against it.

My rust remover worked so great to the point that I couldn’t mount the axles, since the rust was so thick, the diameter of the bolts shrank, and as such it resembled a stripped bolt when I tried to thread it. Went to lowes and grabbed some grade 8.8 m10x1.25x25mm bolts. Unfortunately, the heads were so big I could only tighten them with a wrench, I will change them to proper grade 8 flange nuts once they come in the mail.

Overall this job took me something like 9-10 work hours and about 40 crap hours of trying to source parts, returning parts, trying to break rusted bolts free, breaking them and grinding them/tapping them out. The bushings were a serious pain to get out due to the races rusting into the steel.

-Axle Seals
-Differential clearances checked
-Differential and subframe pressed bushing Replaced
-X Swaybar swapped to a base (thicker) one.
-Rear Driver axle swapped (passenger original put back in)
-Kawasaki Nut fix (Used three spring washers on each side)
-M77 Lube TSB Fix
-Diff Fluid Dropped and replaced

No more sounds! I am a happy camper. The sense of relief is real. The car feels better cornering and handling, more responsive when I hit the gas and overall, I’m just happy this is over.

Now my wife’s Base G37 Has a blown bushing as well…I figured it did, but I poked my head down there today and sure as hell, silicone residue on her cover. Luckily hers has almost no rust, so I am confident that it will be a far easier job.

Thank you all for your help, the ideas and the expertise. Hope someone can happen upon this post in the future one day, and potentially fix the issue for them as well.

 

That's for taking the effort to document all this. It will definitely come in handy for someone else.