81 COE Freightliner w/cummins help

The IH won't work as the gear ratios will be different, and the spring hangers will be different. Pull the power divider and see if the problem is it and not the front ring and pinion. If it's only the power divider, it shouldn't be too expensive to repair or replace with a used one.

 

Man sorry to hear bout your bad luck. unfortunatly i have been there and done that too. the stock axles they put in the reightliners of that vintage were pretty weak and i have busted many of them including drive shafts lol. what you have is a busted ring gear. it will have a spot with three teeth missing. it always takes three teeth. the fact that it has been blue glued is not a concern as thse axles are just weak. I Got tired myself of relpacing parts and installed a different set of axles into my truck that I bought off a friend. they were different from my stock axles and they didnt just bolt right in but they were made to work. the differential housing on the new ones are much larger and i ended up moving an air tank for clearance.

ok so now on the axles you have on your international. first off i am assuming that they are different manufacturer than you frieghtliner and they parts wont interchange right? If the parts wont interchange then you need to install the whole axles. no small job but it can be done. unfortunatlly you will need to install both axles as they will have matched ratio. There are several ways to accomplish this. One way is to cut the frames and weld the rear frame section of the international onto the friegthliner. Now right off i know this is gona get a lot of bad feedback but i have done frame lenthens and shortening on well over 200 truck in my career and never had one fail. In addition to welding you will need to add some new frame member inside the old welded frame and bolt it properly. in effect this makes it double frame. this will only work if you frame dimensions are the same from the international to the freightliner.

Ok next way is to unbolt all the suspension pieces of the frieghtliner and then the international and then install all the suspension pieces off of the international onto the friegthliner. this requires drilling many new holes to accept the new suspension pieces. this may bee the route you may have to go depending on what the axles look like.

The next one and this is what I did is to unbolt the axles at the u bolts. in effect leaving all the original frieghtliner suspension. the donor axles i used had a airbag suspension that was so wore out it was way to expensive to rebuild. the new axles had some different type mounting on it but a few hours with the torch and a grinder they were cleaned down to the tubes with no mounting on them. I then had to cut the perches off of the frieghtliner axles to mount onto the new axles. the perches sit on top of the axle just under the spring stack. they have a rod with a couple of bushing going to them to hold the axle alignement. they are welded on and can esily be removed without destroying them. some of them have round rose welds that go on the inside of the perch. I just torched them off blowing into the axle tubes as i wasent worried abbout it at this point as that set of axles was now scrap anyhow. Ok do not weld the new perches on at this point. get the new axles into the truck and all bolted up and in position where they will go. once everything is all lined up and your satisfied with your alignement and you have them in square and where you want then you can weld them in place. it is a little tight but it can be done with on bead front and one on the back.

If you do this method you will have to make sure your differential housing on the new one is right in the middle and they are not offset to one side or another. some are and this makes a real pain to mount. not saying its impossible just saying it makes it much harder. ask me how i know that lol. ok the second thing you will need to look for is that your s cam tubes are all facing the same way and in the same location as your orriginall ones. mine werent and i had to remove all the scam spiders and rebolt them all back on in different positions so they were. in addition ro changing the spider positions all the inboard brackets had to be cut then rewelded.

ok so now you should have some information to make a decision lol.

 

Oh yea also if you ran the truck with the front axles pulled and the power divider engaged and it didnt make the noise its not the power divider. i will garuntee its the ring and pinion. also you must have gotten the valve situation figured out.

 

Nice pic driva post some more .Do you plan on modding it a little bit?

 

I dont know about moding it but i sure would like to sandblast and paint the trailer and paint and clean up the truck a bit. its amazing what a little paint will do.

Anyhow If you want my honest opinion on the rear ends I would swap them for something a bit more beefy if your gona be doing that kind of work in and out of the fields. those stock rears just arent made strong enough to pull those kind of loads through mushy ground. i broke the ring and pinion on mine several times. sheared the pinion off at the yoke at least twice and one time broke both ring gears and the power divider and the resulting snap then sheared the drive shaft all in one shot. i have so much money in fixing this weak set of axles to yet break something again that i could just cry. Trust me these stock axles just werent built for this kind of off road use.

sounds like you did the right thing to get er rolling and get back where ya needed to be. I cant count how many times ive had to do things like that.

I will try and get a pic of the valve location in a couple of days and i also have the valve pulled out of my parts pile if you need it.