It's a place called Wier, it's in Quebec about one hour from Montreal.

 

**** happens.... you broke it and you fixed it and lived to wheel again.

Thanks for sharing... I got the "pleasure" of hearing that sound once in my life driving 55 down a road... I shelled out my 5.13's in the rear of my Ranger.

 

Doc olds, We replaced the ring and pinion with Yukon, the spider gears were perfect to my luck because we couldn't find them any ware except from GM at an outrageous price, the oldcarrier hub was cracked in two places, I'm positive that the carrier hub is one of the Major causes of the failure, as you guys have heard, many people on this form have been complainingabout a vibrating noise coming from the front endwhen coasting at 50 MPH well it's because the carrier hub is cracked and the ring and pinion are out of wack now, I had the noise for about 3 to 4 weeksbefore the diff disintegrated, of course notknowing at the time and also thinking it was a heat shield or something like that. The secondmajor thing we noticed was the pinion was not shimmedproperly by GM, when we reassembled the new gears we had to add 1/4" of shims to get the proper backlash, the backlash should be nomore then .08 without the extra shims we were getting .22 NOT GOOD!!we went back to look at the old gears,the markings that the pinion made on the ring were at the very top of the gears, again NOT GOOD!! they should be in the middle of thegears, this means the backlash was wellbelow the tolerance for any diff out there. My honest opinion is that I really don't thing it's a question of the aluminum carrier causing this, I think it crappy gears crappy carrier hub andvery poor setup by GM.

Sorry the picture is not great!! cell phone LOL

 

So for my own education, are lockers something that can be added on? I have the same model, 06 Lux package, and the few times I have been out I had a little trouble in some areas where the other rigs with lockers made an easier go of it. So I'd like to look into getting lockers and possibly a new cast iron front diff if possible/available.

 

If you want to install a rear locker you can, you have the choice from the Eaton Elocker or the ARB air locker, as for the front, there is really nothing available right now and also for the CI diff I've been toldfrom some people that you can use the CIdiff from the Alpha and others are saying you can't so I'm not sureif you can or not!![/align]

 

Blackbear, thank you! for the details. I agree. I was told in the bigining of this problem that the suspect was sub par gears, but then the finger pointed to the aluminum differential. The hub cracking is bad do do. I would have thought it would take a lot more HP and TQ to look that ugly?
You are absolutely right about the pinion shim. If that backlash is not right (especially out of the box new) you are gonna get a ring gear destroyed, it is a matter of time, not if. GM has got to do better than that!!

How many miles on your truck when it blew? Not much I bet.

When you have high mileage on a differential, they start to sing. The singing is most all the time from the pinion shim(s) getting worn out, backlash getting out of tolerance, and then it is just waiting to happen. That one little time when the pinion does not line up with the ring gear absotutely perfect, crunch-n-buzz.Witnessed and tore upmany a rear in the muscle car FAST series. Guys bring em to the track with 60 -80k miles, never rebuilt the rear, couple rips and....crunch. I learned [:@], one of the first things to rebuild in a resto.

 

I had about 18,000 mile on it when it blew. I wonder if this thread shouldn't be move to the H3 section seeing that it is getting way more technical then the original thread of a video.
itmight help others.

 

I moved it. I think the problem is H3 specific, so good idea.

 

There is one important thing for others to know, if ever you try to rebuild the H3 front diff the spider gears as mentioned earlier can only be purchased from GM and also the carrier hub, the hub is specific to the H3, the one I ordered at the time did not fit the carrier,the place we got it from said that they were sure it was going to fit, they called me back the nextdayto apologized and said the only placewe will find it is at GM, the guy felt bad so he gave me a credit for the hub.We called GM, the price was 375.00 + 150.00 rush charge[:@][:@][:@]
so I took the free hub and machined down to fit and welded the front plate to it as you see in the picture in my other post.

 

I agree BB, it's not your first rodeo and everyone is arm chair quarterbacking. Anyone who off roads a lot has done something that someone else considers "dumb", there's no text book way towheel every situation. I'm sure you off road a lot (I can tell by your truck) so my bet is the CRAPPY aluminum front diff that just had enough of serious off roading. I've seen Ford pickups drive over similar terrain all day and not puke a diff. Chalk one up for GM trying to save a buck with wimpy aluminum. Alpha owners are lucky GM came to their senses!