rear wheel bearing fail

[brian]

Just removed half shafts to find driver side damaged. Question 1 ... are all half shafts the same? Can I use any old Pontiac diff for spares Question 2 wear is on half of contact area,is this just bad luck or is there something else going on ? Thanks

[bhm1712]

I'm not familiar with doing rear axles in cars but a shaft is a shaft and a bearing is a bearing so....

At work when I've dropped onto a mechanics job instead of electrical I've replaced various driveshafts and bearings I've had wear to only a portion of the shaft due to the bearing seizing or the inner race wearing out of round and allowing the shaft to occasionally (depending on load) spin within the out of round inner race.

I would imagine a similar situation has occurred here. A new half shaft or repaired half shaft ( most machine shops that repair engine crankshafts will be able to weld up the worn section and machine it back down to spec ) and a new bearing providing the bearing housing is ok will probably sort it out.

As for spares I'm not sure so somebody else will have to answer that.