Once you have the bolts out you need to pry the differential with a pry bar or crow bar. (I don’t have any pics of that…sorry) Don’t damage the teeth. Use anything you can hook onto on the differential itself and pry it out, little by little, side to side. Put a bucket or something underneath to help catch the diff when it comes out. You don’t want it hitting the hard ground and chipping a gear tooth. Mine practically fell out because I had “spun cups” (more about that below).

It’s heavy!

Be very careful to make sure the spacers located underneath the caps (they look like large metal washers) don’t fall out when you’re prying out the diff. Pay attention as to which spacer is on which side, label it and put it in a baggie. You will reuse the spacer with the new bearings. Note its orientation under the bracket as well. One or both sides of the shims will have a shaved corner to make installation easier. The shaved corner does towards the outside.

Then you have a mostly empty pumpkin with the exception of the pinion gear which just pulls right though because nothing is holding it place any longer. Ya see the end of the axle which you partially removed earlier sticking through on left side of pic?



And the pumpkin without the pinion gear in it (you can see right through that sucka):



The caps look like this once out of the "pumpkin":



Now you can see the cup (or race) and shim (or washer or spacer) here zip tied together. The bearing cone (with rollers) is of course still on the differential (it will be cut off or pulled off with a hydraulic press).



And me holding the race and shim over the bearing which is how it sits under the cap:



And here is a good example of very pitted cone bearings (see the rollers!) and to a lesser degree, a pitted race. This is the driver's side carrier bearing. By far the worst of the 3 bearings in my diff.



Pitted race:



And here is a slightly pitted cone bearing from the passenger side.



and the accompanying race:



I also found some additional wear in the side gears....I think that's what they are called. They can be seen through the gap in the differential case. The Ford mechanic told me not to be worried, that it wasn’t enough wear to justify changing the side gears.



Here is the old crush sleeve mounted on the pinion gear shaft which you need to replace for the rebuild. I am pointing to it with the screwdriver. This gets squeezed and crushed by tightening the pinion nut to create "preload" or more simply put, to get the pinion bearings nice and tight to their respective races but not too tight.