Doorway opening to the garage is 104" wide, and the bed of the truck is ~102" wide. Tight fit, but if it fits, it ships.
Axle shafts out, driveshaft off, VSS off, drain the oil to reuse (just changed it a year ago) and the old diff comes out.
These fuckin diffs have to be 150#. Jesus fuck.
Old 4.88 in the foreground, new 4.30 in the background. 4.88 diff was something like 39 ring gear teeth, 8 pinion teeth, 4.30 diff is 43 ring gear teeth, 10 pinion teeth. Bonus points if you can tell a big difference at this point (I didn't).
Interestingly enough, the profile of the ring gear, and it's position in the carrier, are way different between 4.88 and 4.30 diffs:
Old 4.88 diff has this crown to the back of the ring gear/abs ring combo that moves the ring gear towards the passenger side of the truck by about a half an inch.
Slapped the bitch in there by balancing it on a floor jack. Diff housing is too low to use a tranny jack, and it's too heavy to bench press (for me) while aligning. Also of note here, I pulled out the 05+ VSS and stuck in my 04 VSS. Fits fine, and test drive proved that it works fine as well.
It was at this point I realized that my old axle shafts were not going to work. Upon careful inspection, it was determined that the axle shafts that came with this 4.30 diff were in fact 36 spline shafts, making it a S130 diff, whereas my old 4.88 diff is 34 splines, making it a S110. Super glad that I had the ebay seller ship this diff with axle shafts, as it wasn't going back together without them.
Also, now that I have a S130 diff in the back of my truck instead of a S110 diff, I technically have more towing/GCWR capacity :P
Counting axle shaft splines. The O.D. of the axle shafts at the spline are different by ~1mm as well (makes sense).
Took her for a short spin last night and man does it feel fast. Can't wait to get it out on the highway and see how it feels. Fingers crossed for 1-2mpg improvement.