Replaced Front Diff. 2000 Blazer 4X4

A brief How-to:
Last week i discovered that my front differential was bad. My first call was to the dealer, seeing you cant buy this item in the aftermarket. Yea well they wanted $2500. So then I decided I would have to go to the junk yard. Got it for $300!
To start I took off both spindles. These have to come off in order to get the 1/2 shafts out. To take out the spindle you must take the nuts off for the upper and lower ball joints as well as the tie-rods. Once all that is all out of the way. It will give you more room if you take off the upper control arm (does not seem necessary ) You will have to take off the lower control arm (in order to do this you will have to drop the sway bar from the left side as well).
Then unbolt the 4 (2 bushings on the left side) bolts holding the diff in. Then there is a black plastic housing holding a cable into the dif. unbolt the 3 bolts holding it in. it will take some force but pull it back and release the spring that is holding the cable in place. then disconnect the drive shaft. be carefull taking out the diff my guess would be that it weighs about 50 lbs. i would recommened replacing the or filling the fluid (80-90) Before you put the dif back up in the truck.
takes about seven to ten hours depending on how things go for ya
Any questions just ask

Sounds like a pretty major job. Congrats on the successful completion.
Did you take any pics while doing it? I could see this becoming a pretty nice how to if you did.

When we did mine we decided to leave the passenger side spindle intact, we just took off the wheel in order to access the flange bolts. But we had a pretty hard time getting the old diff out and even more trouble getting the new one in.

Sorry, no pics...it was too damn cold lol 11 degrees to worry about pics plus there was grease all over the place i didnt want to ruin the camera. My 1/2 shafts were bad thats where all the grease came form .

yes i guess i could see leaving the right spindle on i had to replace that bearing as well, I didnt have any problems getting the one back in, maybe thats why you did? also did u remove the lower control arm on the left side?

Yeah, i'd say thats definitly the biggest reason we had so much trouble. Another huge problem was the fact that it would only fit out one way.
I forgot to mention we ended up taking off the lower drivers control arm as well.
I had the same reaction to the dealers quoted price. Went straight to the phone book for junkyards.

It sucks that you pretty much have to take apart the whole front chassis...Im a chevy guy through and through. But i wasnt happy with them last week.lol. they built the front end around the dif...

I'm rarely happy with the way chevy does things, ive come across some things that should be simple that turn into relatively big ordeals...I guess its good ive got such a bad memory, i cant remember what a PITA the last project was so i jump into the next one ready to go.
wolfox commented a while back that gm tried to build a chinese puzzle box and ended up with the blazer:lol:

How did you know the front diff was bad?

Also, what caused it to go bad?