I recently bought a 2012 grizzly 700 eps with 1000 miles on it. I haven’t put 2 miles on it when I started hearing noises from the front right wheel area. I jacked her up and the right wheel was hard to turn, the left wheel turns fine. I thought it was the wheel bearing, and took apart the hub and related parts. The wheel bearings are fine. I tried to turn the front right axle by hand but it’s hard to turn. And I can feel a grinding vibration. The axle flopped down to the floor, not good. I tried to pull out the entire axle assembly as one unit but it would not budge. I cut the band around the boot closest to the differential. The axle came right out but the double offset joint (I think that’s the parts name) will not come out of the differential. The bearings I could see appear ok and had grease. The DOJ is hard to turn by hand. See pics.
I would appreciate any help or advice. I think the diff may have a bad internal bearing? How does the DOJ come out of the diff? Am I going to have to pull out this entire diff and rebuilt it or could it be something I overlooked? I have the shop manual but it doesn’t have a lot of detail on this. How could the diff go bad when the machine has 1000 miles on it?
