First gear setup. Feedback?

This is my first attempt at setting up a gear. D44 rear from an xj. 4.56 thick.

Pinion bearing preload (used setup bearings) - q
15 in/lb.
Backlash - 0.0055



How's it look and am I within spec?
I added 0.003 to my pinion depth because I was a tiny bit short on my second attempt. This is the result (third attempt). Pinion seems to be a tiiiny bit too far in, but I don't have any smaller shims

The patterns seem to have a nice symmetrical oval pattern, it looks great to me.

IH392 said:

The patterns seem to have a nice symmetrical oval pattern, it looks great to me.

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Awesome! I'm hoping to get a few confirmations before I press in the new bearings. REALLY hoping the final setup will only take one try as I don't have a bearing puller.

Also, I should mention the carrier has almost no preload right now. That's how it's been run since the last time it was setup years before I got it, and I haven't noticed any problems. How paranoid do I need to be about carrier preload, and if I really need to add some preload, is it safe to add some shims to the outside of the race (to save me from pulling those bearings) ?

My opinion is get the bearing separator and do it right. There's a lot of stresses going on. And if there's hardly any preload, and when those bearings wear down a little more than you have a loose carrier. I know you can install those bearing with a socket and a hammer, that's the way I used to do it before I got a press. It's not a pretty way of doing it though.

Its hard to tell from the picture but it looks like the pinion may be just a tad shallow especially from the pic on the coast side.

IH392 said:

My opinion is get the bearing separator and do it right. There's a lot of stresses going on. And if there's hardly any preload, and when those bearings wear down a little more than you have a loose carrier. I know you can install those bearing with a socket and a hammer, that's the way I used to do it before I got a press. It's not a pretty way of doing it though.

Click to expand...

Nothing's set in stone just yet. I may be picking up a bearing puller today if I can find one, as I've still got the front d30hp to do today as well. Just hard to justify a $200 tool I'll probably never use again (I have more than enough of those )

Keekleberrys said:

Its hard to tell from the picture but it looks like the pinion may be just a tad shallow especially from the pic on the coast side.

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Shallow? I thought it looked a tad deep. Wait, what's shallow? Not enough pinion depth?

Also, I thought you want the drive side to be a bit closer to the toe side, so that when you're under positive torque, the resulting deflection will put the contact pattern heel-ward, to dead center on the drive side. Then on the coast side, you want it a little closer to heel, so on negative torque, deflection moves the pinion toe-ward closer to center.
Is this not the case?

I just used the el cheapo harbor freight bearing separator. It does the job, but does bend the bearing cage. I always press new bearings on anyways.

IH392 said:

I just used the el cheapo harbor freight bearing separator. It does the job, but does bend the bearing cage. I always press new bearings on anyways.

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You press new bearings on during the setup? But if your el-cheapo bearing separator wrecks the cage... then what?

I press new bearings on after setting it up.

Ah yes. I am planning on new bearings for the final setup. Just want to make sure my pattern and numbers make sense before I press on bearings that I won't be able to remove

Well FFS!.
So I went to install the new bearings on the pinion, followed the instructions to the letter, according to every doc I could find, which say to press in the inner pinion bearing with a press, then put the pinion in the housing and use the pinion nut to press the outer onto the pinion. Set my torque wrench to 220lbs just to be safe, destroyed the pinion threads completely. Full gear set is now garbage.
WHAT in the holy **** am I doing wrong? Stripping the pinion threads on my old 4.10's was the reason for the upgrade, and now I'm absolutely no closer to having a gear set. Is every single doc I've found on the internet, and the official gear install docs that came with my gears, wrong? Is there some special way of installing the outer pinion bearing?

*pretty much SOL until someone's got an answer for me. No vehicle till this is done, and can't source a new gear set locally for at least 2 weeks. Have to order from the US and drive across the border to pick it up, but don't have a ride to borrow for at least a week or two*

Man that sucks! Are you talking about pressing on the outer bearing race? I used a big brass punch and slowly hammered my new pinion bearing races into the housing.

Were you trying to seat the bearing race into the housing using the pinion nut? Get a race/seal driver set, and freeze the bearing race before installing it. Most the time almost no effort is required to press them in once properly frozen.

.0055 is too tight, which is why it is to toe, I'd move .005 shims from RGS to NRGS which should get you right around .008, spec on a 44 is .006-.010.

Now, next question how did you get a pattern if you screwed up the pinion? This with setup bearings, or did you use the old bearings? What was the marking on the old pinion, and what was the old pinion stack, new pinion markings and new pinion stack?

I use one of these to install race/seals. http://www.amazon.com/OTC-4507-Bearing-Race-Driver/dp/B000O824Y8

And one of these to pull the carrier bearings:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/yga-56072?seid=srese1&gclid=CNm34Y7Wr74CFcNafgodLzMA9Q

And one of these to remove/install carriers on anything bigger than a dana 30 that doesn't use bearing preload adjusters.

http://www.yukongear.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProdID=5280

No. The race was driven in before. This was trying to get the outer bearing on to the pinion shaft.
I managed to rebuild enough thread on the pinion to get it all together, and I think its okay now. Bit worried that I'm missing 3 threads on pinion, but oh well.

But, I've gotta to the d30 tomorrow so I still need to know a better way to get that outer pinion pressed in.

The outter bearing, the one on the yoke side, should slide over the pinion. It is not a press fit, and it should not take but a little bit to move it down the shaft. It needs to be able to move durring the assembly process to get the preload correct.

-Ron

Got a dead blow? You can drive the yoke down with the deadblow. How much preload did you put on the carrier? Did you have to fight it to get it in?

When I'm installing the bearing that's next to the yoke, I always use the old nut from the old gear set, because it is usually easier to install. Or if the nut is damaged, I have gone to hardware store and picked up a normal nut that will spin right onto the pinion. Just like you, I stripped out pinion threads before, so lesson learned.

WB9YZU said:

The outter bearing, the one on the yoke side, should slide over the pinion. It is not a press fit, and it should not take but a little bit to move it down the shaft. It needs to be able to move durring the assembly process to get the preload correct.

-Ron

Click to expand...

This is the source of much argument on the Internet as well as service manuals. There are tonnes of threads about this question and there are always a few people who say "the outer bearing should just slide right on", and then 50 other guys insist that it must be a press fit. Some guys argue that if it doesn't just slide on, give it a light sanding on the inner race surface until it DOES just slide on, and then more guys start yelling about why you can't do this. I don't believe anyone on either side now, but I figure no matter what, pressing it on with the pinion nut isn't the right answer and I can't think of any other way to get it on there, so I'll be sanding down the next one.

markw said:

Got a dead blow? You can drive the yoke down with the deadblow. How much preload did you put on the carrier? Did you have to fight it to get it in?

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I thought about this, but if the force required to press that bearing on is greater than what the pinion nut can deal with, I'm not sure I want to be putting MORE impact force directly into the ring gear. Heard other guys say they destroyed their ring/pinion gears by doing this.

IH392 said:

When I'm installing the bearing that's next to the yoke, I always use the old nut from the old gear set, because it is usually easier to install. Or if the nut is damaged, I have gone to hardware store and picked up a normal nut that will spin right onto the pinion. Just like you, I stripped out pinion threads before, so lesson learned.

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I started with the nut I'd used for setup so it had no resistance on the threads. It started stripping so I tried a new nut, it went on much easier than it came off


That said, I took a break and a cooldown as I was raging all over the garage and yelling at squirrels about this for an hour.
Came back to it, pulled off the old nut, ground off the end of the pinion and re-built EVERY SINGLE THREAD that had enough on it to bother rebuilding. Then put the pinion into the housing again, held up the axle with stands and pointed the pinion down to the ground, installed the outer shims, bearing, baffle, and yolk, then rested the whole thing on my welding gloves and used a brass punch to drive the pinion down into the yolk. This seems to have worked, though I guess I'll find out if it did any damage to the pinion soon . Now that it's been pressed on ones, the bearing is tight fit but can be pulled off by hand with some effort.
Will definitely be sanding down the next outer on my D30 today.


The final pattern still looked good, though if I had some smaller shims, I'd like to remove 0.001 from the inner race, but I'm going to get the D30 installed to get a bit more experience (front's way less important) and perhaps come back to the rear once I'm less psychotic about the whole situation yesterday

markw said:

Were you trying to seat the bearing race into the housing using the pinion nut? Get a race/seal driver set, and freeze the bearing race before installing it. Most the time almost no effort is required to press them in once properly frozen.

.0055 is too tight, which is why it is to toe, I'd move .005 shims from RGS to NRGS which should get you right around .008, spec on a 44 is .006-.010.

Click to expand...

I looked all over for d44 backlash specs and found that the most consistent numbers I found were 0.005 to 0.009. Where are you getting 0.006 to 0.01 from? Not arguing, just haven't ever seen those numbers. I've seen guys claim numbers as high as 0.008 to 0.015 which seems way too high for me, while others claim as low as 0.003 to 0.008.

markw said:

Now, next question how did you get a pattern if you screwed up the pinion? This with setup bearings, or did you use the old bearings? What was the marking on the old pinion, and what was the old pinion stack, new pinion markings and new pinion stack?

Click to expand...

The pattern in the OP was during setup with the old bearings (machined a bit for lighter tolerances for easy removal). Old pinion was marked 2.4xx and some while the new was 4.2xx. I was going to go with the shim stack calculation based on those but thought better of it because the old gear wasn't setup properly anyhow. I did check my final shim stack against the calculation and it was off by something like -0.01 , so the old stack was WAY out to lunch.
I managed to grind down the 3 pinion threads at the end and cleaned up the rest. Seems to have JUST full engagement on the nut still, so it's okay as is, I just don't know if the pinion can come back off without having to replace it.


So at this point, I'm just trying to figure out If I really should add some more backlash or decrease pinion depth. Most people have said my numbers and patterns look good, but I know better than to trust based on majority I don't have a bearing puller, so I really don't want to adjust backlash from the carrier. Inner race would be easier, but I also don't want to pull that pinion nut again as the pinion threads probably won't be able to deal with another re-install