Working on my rear brakes this evening I discovered an unfortunate problem - my pass. side axle seal is done for. There's a nice nasty coating of oil on the inside of the drum, and the snout of the axle is covered in greasy black brake dust. 

 

I've never had an axle out of this truck before, but we rebuilt the diff in my brother-in-law's '05 Chevy 2500 (AAM axle) a couple months ago, so it's not exactly foreign ground for me... but that said, is there anything I need to look out for? 

I know I need to get a gasket for the axle plate, but what other parts (besides obviously the new seal) do I need to get? 

Just a seal as far as I know. When you take the hub off the seal is on the back of the hub. No other gaskets you would need. You might need new nuts for the axles I've seen some were like nyloc's and no longer hold properly after being removed.

I did my right one a few years back and all I remember getting was the seal and reusing all hardware. IIRC!!

That's one thing I've not done yet is axle seal on the rear. The rear pinion seal was covered under warranty. The front axle seal where done by a shop because tire shop tore the seals changing the unit bearing up front. So I'm due to see them start leaking.

Wow that socket is an SOB to find... I called 12 parts stores before I finally found one, 40 miles across town, that had one in stock. 

 

Pretty darn easy once you find it, though. The key is pretty different from any I've seen before. You've gotta sink it into the nylon on the nut... My reading said to tighten it to 120ft/lb then back it off 1/4 turn. The hub should spin easily at that point - my axle looked great, bearings were in good shape, just the seal had gone out. The seal was $31.70 from Napa and is an SKF seal in a Napa box. 

I cut the side off an ATF bottle and dumped in some diesel to clean the bearings and nut up, then cut open another bottle and doused both bearings with 80w90 Mobil 1 and let them soak for a good half hour while I did some other stuff before putting the hub back together. 

The only thing out of the ordinary I encountered: you have to really He-man that hub to get it off once you've got the nut off. It fits TIGHT over that lip on the spindle, even when its leaking.

 

My memory is back now. I found the socket easily and it was local. When pulled that little clip out I dropped in the gravel driveway and lost it. Spent an hour trying to find with my fingers and a magnet. The local dealer was out and I had to drive 50 miles to get to a dealer that had it. They then charged me almost $15 for it. A 50 cent clip. That was the only difficult part I had to deal with.

Doesn't it figure?!

All the pictures of D80s I saw online had an actual piece of keystock in there, so I'm not sure what the deal is. Fortunately mine was stuck in the nylon pretty good but not so much so that I had to really work to get it out (and potentially fling it all the way to the other side of the garage!)

That is all mine had in it was the little clip.

Writeup *cough cough*