Bob you are exactly right! My uncle could have saved himself lots of $ once had he listened to me.
I was doing a service on one of his buses and when I tried to check the differential level I couldn't touch any by sticking my finger in the hole.
I stuck a wire down in it and found it was abpout 1/2 empty.
I decided it was a good time to change it since it was a new to us bus, and we had never done so since owning it for a couple months.
When I pulled the plug nasty oil and chunks of gears came out.
I went next door to my uncles office and told him that # 170 needed to be pulled out of service and the rear end needed to come out to find how bad it was, & repair it.
He told me "it can't be pulled out of service now, yer driving it Sat!" (this was Thurs afternoon)
I told him look this is serious it could leave someone stranded if it goes out, or worse could cause an accident if it locks up.
He said "It hasn't been making any noises or acting up and it has to GO, pull it out on Monday after it runs on Sat.!"
Well on Sat I took a group of senior citizens on a trip about 100 miles away shopping and as I dropped the group off, it would not pull away from the curb.
I tried backing up and it did back up, but jumped, jerked and made horrible banging & clanging noises.
I called my uncle and told him about it. After he quit ranting & raving I asked him what he wanted to do.
He told me "call your wrecker & tow it home, I'll send yer mom & dad up to get the group in #160 to take them home!"
Hmm, funny if he'd listened to me on Thursday he'd saved a tow bill, fuel & extra driver pay.
In the end it had a bad pinion bearing that was shot. (was shot before we bought it, just had been Dr'd to make it through the sale process)
The rollers from the bearing had fallen out and gotten in the gears and locked it up so I couldn't go forward, and when I backed up the roller fell out.
The gears had CHUNKS out of them and the oil had been replaced with something thicker than pure molasses on a cold winter morning after being stored out side all night.
BK
Hey chevy49
Just finished changing mine with help of two grown men - was NOTHING easy about it!
LOL! Been there done that! (more than once)
Please don't tell us Gary you put Eric in the same class as a grown man just kidding Eric
LOL!