Originally Posted by harpua00

Swapped out the axles in my 1985 300D last night and into some headaches worked later than I should have and may have done a couple dumb things. Here goes:
1.) new chinese axle stubs were noticeably shorter than OEM's on the diff side so I couldn't get the clips on with the original spacers in place. I didn't see a procedure for setting spacer thickness in Haynes so I just guessed that the object is to not have any in/out play after the clip is on. The right side fit perfectly with no spacer. The left side had play with no spacer so I hand ground the original spacer from about 0.040"thk. to about 0.020"thk. Getting the clip on was hard but a couple taps with a screwdriver pushed it into place. I noticed though that the axles became difficult to rotate....seems with the originals still on I could turn each by hand and spin the diff. With the new ones installed the diff feels much stiffer. Is this a problem? Is it possible to make the new axles fit too tight, or as long as you can get the clip on are you OK?

2.) I stripped one of the diff mount bolts that bolt up to the underside of the body/frame. Looks like these bolts go into some kind of threaded strip slipped in on the other inside of the frame member. Any idea how to fix this? Or are these bolts not actually doing much and leaving one stripped one isn't the worst thing in the world? Any torque or big loads on this mount?

Tired this AM, I really need to discipline myself and call it quits at a reasonable hour next time and avoid dumb mistakes......