Axle Re-Gear and Repair

Well, I finally incurred some serious damage which threatened to put my TJ on the jack stands. Seeing how the TJ is my daily driver, that would mean that the CJ-7 would then become the daily driver. That is a really dangerous vehicle to have to drive every day. It handles like $h!t and get really crappy gas mileage. There holes in the floor board right above the exhaust pipes, so my left leg gets cooked and the only gauge that kind of works is the speedometer. Needless to say, that is a vehicle of last resort. Any way, back to the damage to the TJ...

I am not sure right now what happened, but I noticed oil spots in my parking spot. Upon closer examination, I discovered oil leaking from the driver's side of the rear axle. At first I thought it was the recently discovered and temporarily repaired bent backing plate. It turned out, upon closer examination, that the axle had about a millimeter of movement at the end of the axle housing. This seemed like a good excuse for me to finally install the 4.56 gears I bought from Jeff over a year before. I will find out the cause of the failure when Jimmy Councilman of Ruff Play get the whole thing tore down. He will be repairing the following:

It turned out that the damage was probably caused when I went wheeling at Paragon and drive through some creeks in January. The brake shoes froze to the drum and I broke it free with a little horsepower. That process bent the backing plate ant twisted the end of the tube. Everything was installed and works perfectly.