opps.....i need help

got a 30/35 with 410s last weekend to replace my wore out 30/35...well to my surprise on close inspection this morning i ended up with an 8.25 and a high pinion 30...wow what a steal...so today i put the 8 in but with my 4.5 inch leafs i now got 6 cause the 8 has a bigger tube...great for me but my pinion angle sucks....what do you guys think...shim it or index it with new perches?
tomorrow i will throw the front together...i got 1.75 inch spacers i bought a while ago cause they were cheap...that should level me off so i dont look like a hot rod...

It seem odd that you would get so much extra lift just going from a D35 (2.6" diameter) to an 8.25 (3" diameter). There's less than a half inch difference between the two. How do you know your pinion angle is bad? Is it vibrating badly? My 2 cents is to shim it if necessary. Easier overall.
B.

are your leafs still new, have they ever been installed? they probably still need to settle. If your pinion angle sucks, just shim it. I think I used a 4 degree shim with 5" of lift so you might want to go to a 6 degree with yours. You do have a SYE, right?

no sye and i dont really plan on it....to much $$$...the transfer case is dropped 1 inch
with the rear fully extended the drive shaft ears rub the yoke..

i would plan on it because your shaft might pull itself out at full droop with that amount of lift. depending on your model tcase, you can get a sye kit for 100 bucks, the cheapy hack and tap kind. if you really want to save some money, grab a front driveshaft from another jeep (one with a cv on it) and have a local shop lengthen it. you could get away all of that for under 250 bucks if you shop around


then again, i have heard people not have any vibes on early tcase trucks with that kind of lift, but they were runnin swampers so who could tell anyway

The extra lift may be due to the spring perches sitting higher on the axle tube. Any difference here will be approx 1:1 gain/loss of ride height. If there is any height difference between a stock 35 and 8.25, I :dunno:

My aftermarket spring perches (MORE) on my 44 place the spring at 7/8" above the top of the axle tube. IIRC the stockers on the 8.25 I had in it sat 'some' lower than that.

I'd get the front end boosted up with those spacers, and THEN check the rear pinion angle & adjust as neccesary. I'd use only steel shims and replace the bolts.

Remember on a stock-type slip-yoke setup, the pinion should point 'up' at approx the same angle as the transfer case output is pointing 'down' (I'd shoot for .5 to 1 degree less, so that under moderate power, the driveline rotation 'pulls' the pinion the last little bit up into alignment.)

haha i put a 9" out of a 67 bronco in my rear which took the axle tubes to 3" or something close... it took my 6.5" leafs up to 8", my best sugjestion would have been to make new perches, thats what i did and without an sye my driveline angle is almost perfect and i have no vibs, but they may have something to do with the length differece of haveing a small block chevy and th350 under the hood, also when you do that you can set you shocks higher on the axle and give yourself better clearance

just my 2cents