Posted by Troy Rudolph on July 29, 1998 at 13:46:03:
In Reply to: Leaky Differential! posted by Peter Florance on July 28, 1998 at 08:40:05:
I haven't done this myself, butI checked the BMW service manual.
1) You have to pull the driveshaft flange off the pinion shaft. It appears to me that you could use a standard puller to do this. You rent or buy one. You need to mark the shaft and flange with a punch or paint stick so you can put it back in exactly the same orientation.
2) You'll need a seal puller (though I've used a large screwdriver in the past for similar jobs) to remove the seal. The puller you rent to remove the flange may well have the correct attachments.
3) Reinstalling the flange seems to be the hard part. The manual references a special tool for reinstalling the flange (and for the previous two steps, but they appear to be more generic). You might be able to drive it on with a big hammer and wood block. Or, maybe you could pull it on using an impact wrench on the flange nut.
Having said all of this, I think I'd drain the diff, remove it, and take to a friendly mechanic to do the installation of the new seal. You'd save some money that way and you wouldn't get into a job you couldn't finish.
I'll bet the Rev. X has some more direct knowledge of this procedure.