I honestly don't know when or where it happened. The locker engaged and worked perfectly but, I have been noticing some pinion rattle when cruising at highway speeds. The rattle would shut up on decel and accel but, at a 70 mph cruise it would sing pretty good. I knew it was coming from the rear diff. I thought it was a worn pinion bearing (loose). So I disconnected the rear driveshaft and gave it a feel with my hands. To my surprise, it was not loose at all...but rather stiff and "chunky" feeling. Uh-oh. Then I pulled the magnetic drain plug and saw quite a bit of material stuck to it....another bad sign.
I finally tore it down today and found the tooth missing from the side gear. The truck is an adventure pak with the locker, so this is an Eaton part. I got online and found an entire kit (#29296-00S) that comes with the spider gears, side gears, cross pin, lock bolt, and thrust washers. Its labeled as a "E-locker service kit"....around $120 from all kinds of sources. Unfortunately the retailers all drop ship from Eaton and none of them have it in stock. This means a two-week wait which sucks. Summit is not far from me and I do a lot of business with them, so I figured they would be as good as any place. The pinion bearings are worn...probably from grinding up some of the tooth. The rest of it looks okay, no damage to the gears or (amazingly) the six locker pins. I'm going to do a simple rebuild & on it with some new bearings and slam it back together with a new crush sleeve. I'm replacing the axle seals and brake pads as well. I'm amazed at how fast H3's go thru rear break pads. These have about 10k on them and they are THIN.
All things considered...a cheap & easy fix. If you want to play...you gotta pay!
EDIT: For the record these are USA Gear 5.13s and original factory bearings...50k miles.