1997 Chevrolet Silverado Z-71 Off Road 4 X 4 from North America - Comments

Items I have replaced was the water pump, battery, belt, alternator, and pinion bearing nut.

I have a slight problem with my rear end leaking. I have replaced the pinion bearing nut twice. Both times they have backed off. These nuts are crimped and also I used locktite and still back off. This causes the rear end pinion seal to leak and also my rear tranny seal to leak. I have also replaced the u-joints. It's a 10 bolt rear end. What is causing this? I've heard everything from the u-joints being bad, weights off the drive shaft, pinion bearing wore out, bent drive shaft, bad yoke, bad crush washer, etc. What seams to be the problem? I'm hard on it, I don't go 4 wheeling, well, I did once for about 5 minutes because I bought some Mickey Thompson Baja Claws and wanted to test them out, but this problem has been going on since I bought it. Every thing else is perfect. Can anyone help me before I have to spend over $1000 to have it rebuilt. Email me at squirly60@hotmail.com Thank you, Jason.

My son just got a 2000 Chevy this summer. Had a what seemed to be a clunk in the transfer case. A co-worker had the same problem, but sometimes more sever, enough to loosen things up. We are now replacing the rear diff. because one of the spider gears broke. After ordering individual parts, which at times became a problem because they were already going into someone else's rear-end, it was cheaper to order a loaded housing, (no-slip with all the guts) but guess what there are 600 on order for our area alone, (St.Paul, Minneapolis). All the service guys seem to know about it, but they won't admit there's a problem. What happened to all the old work, farm, and pleasure trucks that had 100/200 thousand miles and had no problem. Both trucks that I've mentioned are more show pieces rather than work trucks. The dealer said that the GT4 is limited to the 00/02 model year 03/04 use a different rear-end. The truck that I mentioned at work had everyone trying to figure out what was going on. Sound travels a long ways and time reveled a bad diff.