[americanmusc1e]

Originally Posted by LONGHAIR

I am always the one to caution people about messing with things that affect the set-up of the gears....but I'm with Bigdav160 on this one.
You can change a pinion seal w/o hurting anything.
First of all, the "rotating torque"spec is for "when new", meaning freshly installed. You can actually change the contact pattern by tightening your "used" bearings to that point.
The nice thing about this is that it takes an incredible amount of force to crush the sleeve, more than you would apply when reinstalling the yoke.
I would use a new nut and torque it to 100-125 ftlbs and call it good.

Of course use some common sense here. You are doing this "by hand", so stop if anything "feels different".

X2 on this. I feel this would work just fine. Especially on a front diff that doesn't see continuous use anyway. Think of how many miles most normal people drive in 4wd with the hubs locked in compared to the total miles the rear diff gets. When i worked at a mechanics shop I saw mechanics do it and it on a rear diff and it worked just fine. Front diff should be fine.