Hi Brian,
Though the thread is pretty old, I appreciate your reply. I'm sure it will be of help to someone else Googling around to find the answer as I did when I was doing this repair. :-)
I ended up buying an '04 Aztek parts car and pulled the rear carrier out of it for the Rendezvous. It works great, and wasn't too difficult to do.
Just in case anyone is thinking, as I initially did, that they can save time and just pull the rear carrier (along with the short section of attached prop shaft) out of an Aztek in one piece and swap it as a unit into a Rendezvous:
- It's worth noting that the rear prop shaft lengths are different between the Aztek and Rendezvous, so it will have to come off. Some junkyards sell the rear carrier on its own, and others include the rear portion of the prop shaft bolted to the carrier, so I thought I would mention it. I had everything nearly installed, and was trying to bolt it up when I realized that the rear prop shaft mounting bracket from the Aztek was off by a couple of inches compared to bolt holes on the Rendezvous, so I had to remove the rear shaft piece from the carrier and put the correct one from the Rendezvous in. After that minor mixup, the mounting bracket found it's correct position, lol.
Not a big deal, but it's another step that I didn't expect. Even so, it ended up only being an afternoon's work to complete the entire changeover.
Eric