"I have a rattle in my front end."

When a customer tells me that, I usually reply, "It's the marble rolling around in yer head."

Took me a while to find this one (Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 Pickup), but when I pulled the front differential cover, all this shit fell out along with the 90-weight:





Got a new (rebuilt) 3rd member coming from Jasper in a couple days.

Note: Click pics to embiggen. The darker metal pieces are parts of ring and pinion gears. Hardened steel as opposed to the cast iron aluminum (figured that out when I could actually see it) of the housing and bearing caps.

Update:

I got the diff out of the truck first thing this morning:



As you see, the right side bearing cap is gone (yes, I know it's on the left in the pic, but in the car it's on the passenger side; that's the right side no matter how you look at a car), only the bolts and bosses are left. That's what most of the shiny shit sitting on my bench was.



The ring gear (the darker shit in the pile on my bench) got the worst of it.





The new unit should've got there late this afternoon and I'll install it first thing tomorrow.