Originally Posted by 78 Chevyrado (Post 4838262)

This may not help much, But I'm currently rebuilding my dads ford 8.8 in his F-150. an axle went bad and all the metal from that flowed through everything else resulting in badly pitted gears and bearings... the carrier bearings were shot too. So he needs everything except the case itself, I just bought all the parts, nothing high performance other than the LSD carrier and 31 spline shafts and it's costing about $1100. and that's with no labor costs.

Originally Posted by LONGHAIR (Post 4799738)

Personally, I would recommend looking for a used rearend. It may take a little work on your part, but it will come out a lot cheaper. Inspecting the axle is not that hard, but you do need to do it to be sure of what you are getting.
You want to be sure to pull the cover off and see inside. This will assure you of the gear ratio in the first place, but more importantly you can see the actual contact area of the gears.

While doing this you may come across an axle with a "Gov-Lock". It's a factory positraction unit. In a light duty application, they are OK, so it's not necessarily a "deal breaker".....but don't pay any extra for it.

Even if the used axle does fail on you after a few years, it was cheap in comparison. Sure there is some work involved, but you can save quite a bit of money for your efforts.

As always, synthetic lube is your friend here. Cheap insurance.