[ChrisD]

Finally got round to having a go at this today and the first issue I've come up against is after opening up the diff case and removing the two covers that go over the bearings on each side, I can't get the diff itself out of the case... it just won't budge. In the OP's guide he just says "with a bit of work it will come out" but me and a few friends have all tried pulling it and wiggling it as much as we can and it won't budge.

So then we thought maybe its just the fact that the pinion gear is still meshed with the ring gear and that's stopping it all from moving because we haven't undone the pinion shaft nut. But I don't see any mention of undoing that pinion nut before taking the diff out of the housing in the OP's guide, and I was kind of trying to avoid doing anything to the pinion because I'm only swapping the diff and not changing ring/pinion for final drive change. Plus the toyota service manual seems to suggest that pinion nut needs an insane amount of torque, something like 280 lbs-ft.

So yeah, can anyone clarify if you need to remove the pinion nut (or anything else other than the two bearing caps) before you can pull the diff itself out of the housing?