I have a 96 F250. I tore up the rear end Wednesday.

I keep seeing a cutoff date of 1992 on some carriers. Is this an ABS issue or will carriers from all the way back to 1987 work in mine?

Are the carriers ratio specific?

Are there various axle spline counts or are they all the same?

 

I don't know too much about the specifics, but I'll put out what I do know.

There is an issue with the earlier 10.25 axles that the pinion splines are somewhat short and can wear and loosen the yoke, which causes more wear and can cause issues including failure. Somewhere around 92 (i'm guessing?) they changed to longer pinion splines which would change the yoke as well. Possibly the bearings and housing, but I really don't know if those were actually affected or if different spacers, etc. can allow things to work.

Its possible the pinion change caused a change in the carrier as well.. I honestly don't know, but don't think that it would. But due to the fact that the gear set is matched pinion/ring, maybe there is a bit of a difference there. I know Dana60's can have different carriers depending on the gear ratio, or the ring gear could be thick/thin instead.

After 92 or so, they went to electronic speedometers that read off the rear diff instead of a cable from the trans/transfer case, however, the RABS sender on the rear diff was there at least on my '88 and I believe was the same as was used on the electronic speedo trucks.

I haven't heard of different spline counts, but again, I don't claim to know a lot of specifics on these...

Hopefully someone else can chime in as well.

It may actually be cheaper and easier for you to swap an entire axle instead of fixing your current one. They should be pretty easy and cheap to find, just match up the axle ratio, and look for the newer longer pinion if possible.