I had a pretty exciting day. Not too long after I bought my AE86 Corolla for a daily driver, I said the first thing I expected to give out on that car was the diff. That was over a year ago. Fast forward to the past week or two, I've been getting this loud tapping/knocking noise coming from the rear while driving., getting worse at speed. First guess was wheel bearings, then remembered those are usually indicated by more of a humming noise.
Gradually getting worse over the course of a couple days, finally Friday it's the most god-awful racket and you feel it through the whole car. What ever the hell it was, it was going to come apart and wreak havoc any second now. At highway speeds you feel like the car is going to rip apart. I already set up a time this morning (Saturday) to take it to my friend's house so we can try to locate the knocking noise.
So Friday night I get home from work at about 11-11:30 PM and say maybe it's time to start looking for a new beater since this thing is going to tear the axle in half any second now. I get on my local gearhead/ricer forums (tamparacing.com) and head right to 'Toyotas For Sale,' since Toyota is so bad ass. Right near the top I spot a guy giving away a free rear axle for an SR5 AE86 to whoever gets to his house before he goes to the dump. FREE. From one drum to the next, including the diff. Found him on AIM and said "OMFG RIGHT NOW."
I get to the guy's house at about 1-1:30 AM last night and was like holy crap, he's white! (VERY rare among AE86 owners), before getting my free crap, to which he added an alternator.
![Smile :) :)](/wp-content/themes/gtp16/images/smilies/smile.svg?v=3)
Today I started bright and early and ended up swapping out the rear axle/diff in about 4 hours. I gotta say, I love how easy this car is to work on. There's just so much free space!
Long post, but I'm STOKED I replaced an entire rear diff and axle for just the cost of gas to pick it up and fluid to fill it up. The Corolla will live another year!