I have a 6 lug 14bsf in my '91 2500 and am looking to put in a ff... I was in the local junk yard looking for a suitable donor axle, and found some interesting variations of the 14b... I knew there was a sf and ff variety, but i thought all of the ff versions had a removable pinion, but I found a few with ff axle shafts with out a removable pinion... Just wondering wtf they are??? Im going with the removable pinion version, but just wanted to gain some knowledge... Thanks!

Full floater with non removable pinion would be a sterling axle from a newer chevy.

WHAT? No Sterlings in factory Chevys I know of.

What you may have been looking at is the newer AAM 14 bolt with heavy ribbing on the front of the housing.
That being said I think even the newer 10.5 14 bolt FF have a removable pinion case. You may have been looking at 11.5 AAM 14 bolts that were used in diesels and other applications which I do not believe have a removeable pinion case.

Sterlings have a distinctive shape as do 14 bolts, know the difference before you buy. Sterlings have a tone ring plug in the top of the housing, GM runs their tone ring/VSS out of the back of the trans 2wd or t-case 4wd.

If the trucks were older probably Dana 60's or Dana 70's....

True but Dana's only have 10 bolts on their covers right?

WHAT? No Sterlings in factory Chevys I know of.

What you may have been looking at is the newer AAM 14 bolt with heavy ribbing on the front of the housing.
That being said I think even the newer 10.5 14 bolt FF have a removable pinion case. You may have been looking at 11.5 AAM 14 bolts that were used in diesels and other applications which I do not believe have a removeable pinion case.

Sterlings have a distinctive shape as do 14 bolts, know the difference before you buy. Sterlings have a tone ring plug in the top of the housing, GM runs their tone ring/VSS out of the back of the trans 2wd or t-case 4wd.

My bad... I was thinking of the AAM. That's what's in my old mans dmax.

Yep his Dmax has the 11.5 AAM without the removeable pinion casing right?
Heavily ribbed too as I recall.

Yeah and a huge ass weight around the yoke

Yea my son and I have this game we play with GM trucks. Driving down the road I guess what the engine is by the rear axle. He was puzzled how I could guess on the diesels. I finally showed him the difference between the SF, 10.5and 11.5. The 11.5 is huge.

These trucks were definitely older, so Im guessing they had D70?? I will try to get some pics posted up so we can positively identify them... I was stumped to say the least when I saw the full floating axle shafts and looked at the pinion and it didn't have any bolts... I didn't realize that chevy put D70 in their trucks... The pumpkin was too large to be a D60...

you still havent said what year the axles where in.

i know that you are working on your 91.

gm used a d70srw from 88-mid90something, that would be the ff with no pinion bolts.

yeah... I'm not sure what year exactly, but they would have fallen in the 88-mid90ish range, so I guess that is what I was looking at... I will go back to the JY next week and take some pics... Probably nothing that everyone else hasn't seen 1000 times, but was new to me... Im a jeep guy, I know, I know...:smokin: