Few Rearend Rebuild questions

[429mustang]

I swapped out a set of 4.10's in my friends car for 3.73's. I figured out how to use the proform pinion depth gauge and the pinion is in. First, my inch puond wrench is in increments of 25in/lbs, and the pinion drag is probably around 10-12 with a new bearing. Will that be enough being I used a solid pinion spacer setup? I figured everything probably seats slightly tighter since theres no cruch sleeve to absorb any clamping force when torqueing the pinion nut. Also, I'm gonna set the backlash/preload tonight. I've checked out a few buildups but If anyone has any specs/tips on the order I should set up the last two measurements I'd appreciate it.

[429mustang]

Anyone?????

Also, I just tried taking out .003 from the solid pinion spacer to try and snug it up a little more, but then when I tightened it up it was looser??????? So I left out the thin shim all together and now it feels the same as when I had it set up the first time. It doesn't make sense and I'm getting pretty pissed.


solid spacer with .013 - about 8-10 inch/lbs drag
solid spacer with .011 - noticible play/not even at 0 lash
solid spacer only - about 8-10 inch/lbs

Don't wirry, when I took it apart to try the .011 ship I used a hammer to knock out the pinion and totally mushroomed the end of the pinion threads and don't have a 3/4 20 die so I hade to file it down even and go over it a bingh with a thread file. The whole time I had a steering wheel/pulley puller in my tool box. I'm retarded.

[429mustang]

I had a few typo's in the last post: Whirry=worry
Ship=shim
Bingh=bunch

[429mustang]

Well, since I didn't get any replies I went ahead and took some final measurements and sealed it all up. The backlash was around .60 and the carrier slide in pretty easily so everything should spin good and fast, the marking compound was slightly off but I think it'll work. Just kidding, I got the backlash to .008 and the carrier went it pretty snug. Other than figuring out how to use the proform pinion depth gauge and looking up specs the whole deal was definitely worth learning how to do and not having someone else do for a couple hundred $$$.

Congrats man. Setting up my rearend gears...is one of the few things I pay someone to do.

[canukracer]

i'm not sure with the soild pinion spacer? how do you get pinion bearing preload pinion and bearing preload are 2 different things, the way i do ring gear backlash and bearing preload is first move the ring gear to the pinion so it's meshing to the ring gear with this you have 0 backlash now add shims to the other side so they just fit in now add 10 to 15 thou shim extra to this it's hard to get in but this will give you backlash and bearing preload at the same time.

[429mustang]

With the everything out of the rear I started out with the solid pinion spacer and the second thickest shim which measured out the same thickness as the previous crush sleeve. I torqued the pinion nut to around 150 ft/lbs and checked the drag with an inch/lb wrench. It needed to be tighter so I took it apart and went with the next thinnist shim. This gave me the right preload, as far as the pinion depth I already measured everything (bearing centerline/pinion face/thickness/etc) and shimmed it to spec before installing the new bearing. After the pinion was set up I checked it again with my pinion depth gauge to make sure it was exactly where it needed to be. Then I set up the carrier with the right backlash then preload (I used a number of shims to add up the total thickness of the factory shims as a starting point which gave me the right preload, I just had to swap some .010, .015 and .020 shims around to get the right backlash). To do it again shouldn't be a big deal at all, it was just a little confusing at first since I've never done it before.

[ols0051]

This is going to sound crazy but here it goes,, I installed my 3.73's about 4 yrs ago and now I'm going to change the pinion seal. I can't remember what I used to take the flange off the pinion. I don't want to use a gear puller because wouldn't that screw up that crush sleeve. I'm trying to do this without having to set up the thing again. Just a quick seal change, and also to fix a thread on the flange itself that I stripped out by thinking I had the 12mm bolt started when it wasn't ( I shouldn't have used the impact.) Thanks for your help.

[429mustang]

Either way the flange has to come off so the preload will have to be set again on the pinion, it sucks there's not some kind of 2 piece seal that could come off by itself. The puller's really the only way to get it off, it'll pull the flange off off the pinion rather than want to push the pinion out the back but it won't really matter. I'd reinstall the new seal and try retorqueing the old crush sleeve without crushing it more, but it may crush it. It's worth a try, the worst that can happen is you'll have to drop the carrier and use a new crush sleeve. You should have seen what I did to the new pinion thread the 1st time I took it out to readjust the solid pinion spacer. I used a hammer and mushroomed the first 1/2" worth of threads. It took a few hours of filing it even and rethreading it with a thread file cause I didn't have a die that big. I don't know why I didn't just use the gear puller.

[ols0051]

What I ended up doing was just borrowing a 12mm tap and fixing the threads. A 2 minute job( I know what kind of tool I'm buying off the mac truck next.) and then I torqued the pinion nut back to where it was. I will wait until this winter to dig into this seal being the car will only see a couple hundred miles by then. I would like to make a few more passes before I dig into a project as touchy as this one. Thanks for the help in making my decision though.