Fun day (not)... ran into town after identifying the axle nut socket I needed. O'Reilly had it for $17. I disassembled everything on the left side, changed the hub seal, then started scraping and cleaning a LOT of really black gear grease from everything. I discovered that the anchor pin plate had been split and yanked off (instead of unscrewing the nut behind the backing plate to remove the pin) and crushed back into place, so I'm going to have to find or make a properly sized washer and weld/press it on the pin.
Also the axle housing surface (where the seal rides) had a lot of baked-on carbon and fuzz rust. I used brake cleaner and 600 grit sandpaper to remove it, then polished with a Scotchbrite wheel. The hub had been changed at some point since it's red and the others are gray... apparently they didn't clean the sealing surface much, and maybe didn't even put a new seal in!
So... I started reassembling and couldn't get the parking brake lever over the pin. Just as well since it has to come off if I don't want to tack-weld in place... I found that the parking brake cable was completely frozen, at least on the left side. Back to O'Reilly, got both cables and a couple of axle flange gaskets (previous "mechanic" had just glopped RTV everywhere). Now it's started raining
again, and will continue right through Wed. night if not Thurs. morning
Truck is outside of course.