83 300D W123

I've removed the four bolts that hold the mount that holds the diff in place. The diff isn't moving. Are there other thing to remove besides these 4 bolts? The car is up on jackstands, wheels are still on. I gave up on the fill plug and will contend with that later, drain came out easily.
Any help, greatly appreciated.
Do you have to have the axles popped out from the hubs to start this procedure??

Morning ... there are two vertical studs on the front of the diff housing and another two half way back on the main housing.

Here's a photo stolen from eBay .........

Hi Fritz,
Photo didn't come through, but I do see what you're talking about. Is it just a matter of working the diff off these studs?
They don't bolt anywhere do they? books didn't talk about this !!

photo came thru, thanks.

Are these studs bolted up somewhere? In the trunk maybe?? This is really starting to suck :-(

Are these studs bolted up somewhere? In the trunk maybe?? This is really starting to suck :-(

Sorry about multiple posts, my isp seems to be going nuts. The axles are out! The top pair of diff cover bolts were difficult to remove but came out eventually. The driver's side axle has a washer on the diff side, I didn't see one on the pass side. Might still be in the diff, I'll have to check. The c-clips were removed using a small hooked pick tool and a screwdriver to pry them off. Not real hard to remove.
This job, although not ridiculouly hard, is a real PIA on the ground. Still don't have the fill plug out but I'll think of something.
Thanks for your help. Thank You Jim.

The studs go thru the subframe, you must remove the locking nuts from the top side. They are difficult to get to, I used a prybar to move the subframe away from the body as far as possible and held it there with a block of wood to make more room. The studs came out instead of the nuts coming off but result was the same.
Support the diff with a jack and have the flex disc disconnected and the driveshaft collapsed so it is disconnected from the diff. Hope you have more fun than I did.

Axle half-shaft replacement does not require unmounting the differential from the subframe. Assuming you are not replacing the differential itself, don't touch the main four mounting bolts on the top.

When you take off the back differential cover, you are also removing the "differential mount" block of rubber. With this off you should be able to jack up the differential and the subframe assembly its mounted to - slightly.

Car should be up on jackstands that are not under the subframe anywhere. I think I have used wood blocks under the rubber subframe block attachment bolts. You want the wheels free to drop WAY down.

Ken300D

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1982 300D at 351K miles
1984 300SD at 217K miles
1987 300D at 370K miles

Ken300D, you answered my question I was wondering how this was supposed to work. I screwed up in that I jacked the car up from the sub frame mounts and put the jack stands on the subframe. Dumb. Still, got everything out with some work. A little FYI to those having problems with the fill plug. I couldn't get mine out so basically said the hell with it and took off the cover and proceeded to get the axles out. Just for a laugh I thought I'd try the Harbor Freight electric impact wrench and my new cheap made in Tiawan 14mm hex thing. Much to my surprise it worked !! I guess the hammering of the impact wrench was better than all the torque I had attemtped earlier with breaker bars and pipes.
I took the car off the jack and have the tires re-mounted. The wheels are flaring out like an old VW, it this hurting anything, should I just leave it on the stands? I won't be able to put in the new axles for a week or so. Thanks for the replies. This group really can bring some sense of calm to a panicked old half-assed mechanic.

And DONE !! Went together very easily, only took me 6 hours :-) The rebuilds came from Auto Zone and they look pretty bad. Life time warranty but hard to say how well they were fixed. $99 each. Small point that most of you probably know, they paint these things ALL over, mainly to keep off surface rust I guess. You've got to clean the two ends of all paint. I used Acetone and a small wire brush and rags. Once this was done, a little squirt of WD40 and they slippped right into place. I did not remove brakes or anything else to swap these out. I did have to remove the diff vent to bolt it back together but that was trivial. Although it's a ***** to get out the top two diff bolts, I found having the diff way up (suspension on the jack stands) made it easy to put the axles in.
All-in-all a satifying job. Two saturdays, probably 12 hours total but I'm pretty slow and wasn't in a hurry to get the old thing back on the road.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions.