When I bought my 96 E150 year before last, I went through the driveline and replaced both axles and bearings in the 8.8 after seeing the wear in the axles from the bearings (the inner race is the axle itself) I had bought a "Superior" brand right side axle on sale at Summit Racing when I bought the van, then a couple months later after pulling the axles to inspect them, went back to Summit for the driver's side, only to find that Superior was no longer carried there, so went with a "Yukon" brand axle. Well that was a big mistake. That axle was apparently never heat treated, the bearing wore though it in 10,000 miles. And guess what ? The warrantee was good for only a year. No more Yukon anything for me. Buyer beware. The new axle is an "Alloy USA" which I've never heard of but they have a 10 year warrantee. Time and miles will tell. The right side Superior axle has held up fine. You can see where the bearing rides on it but there's no wear you can feel when you run a fingernail across it.

 

Is there a preferred brand of axle and/or bearings for this sort of thing?

I recall Timken was once the benchmark of bearings----have heard they're now partially made in China or other "off shore" outfits.

 

Everything's a crap shoot today. I used "National" bearings and seals bought locally at O'Reilly's. Just wanted everyone to be aware of this failure of a Yukon axle. If I knew I was going to put a lot of miles daily on the van, I'd convert the axle ends to what the old 9 inch rears had with a sealed bearing that didn't use the axle as the inner race.

 

What a crap design, using the axle as the inner race, what on earth were Ford thinking when they designed this? (ah, we can save $5 per axle by making the axle the inner race of the bearing) And shame on Yukon for not manufacturing this part correctly, that is the sort of thing you would expect of a chinese part, or perhaps Yukon are getting their parts made in china now?

 

Yea, well Ford wasn't alone in this design. GM's used it for years in their 10 bolt's and others. As did others too. The 8.8 is a result if the bean counters at Ford replacing the (more expensive) 9" rear with the 8.8.

 

The 8.8 is more fuel efficient, so I think there was more to it than just cost to manufacture. Although they could have redesigned the pumpkin for the 9" and I suspect that would have been a lower cost.

The 8.8 is also almost a direct clone of the GM 12-bolt.

 

I ran into this problem on a 77 Dodge van. After that,never went back to a "semi-float" rear end. All my vans have Dana 60's full floaters now. This is the exact reason to shy away from 1/2 ton vans/trucks.It seems to me...some one made a repair sleeve to put on the part of the axle to bring it back to stock specs,but when all is said and done, its just cheaper in the long run to go with OEM.One of the big issues is proper lube to the bearings. It seems there is a way that the axle causes the lube to spin to the outside to get to the bearing,but in very cold weather,I would think it is borderline, at best. Just my 2c and a lot of experience.

 

This wasn't a lubrication issue. The bearings and axle showed no sign of running dry or overheating. The bearings looked as they did when they were installed. (yea I did replace those anyway) The axle has a perfect channel worn into it the exact width of the rollers in the bearing, obvious that the axle was too soft.