d30 carrier install problems

i needed new knuckles and mounts for my d30 so i got a disco d30 for basically free. i opened it up and notice the sider gears have been welded so i pulled it and swapped there shafts of my non disco . im tightening the four bolts to hold the carrier in and it spins freely and then when there tightened up to either wont move or seems like it almost slips it looks to be pretty well placed i dont know if there is a trick or something im doing wrong the carrier is pretty dry could some gear oil help it spin smoother? there both 3.55 gears. keep in mind this is my first teardown of an axle any help would be great.

Since you are installing a "New" carrier you need to set it up properly. This means pulling the carrier back out, removing the bearings and shims and determining the proper preload, pinion depth, backlash, etc.
Keep in mind that the bearing caps need to be installed correctly too. There is a letter stamped into each cap, one of which is vertical and the other is horizontal.Tthese should match the coresponding letter that is stamped into the gasket surface on the axle.

Sorry to tell you but setting up a carrier is not just a bolt in operation. You will not be able to get it right without the proper tools. Being that you have not done this before I HIGHLY recomend that you do some research on how it's done first. You can majorly damage the ring gear, carrier and even the housing if this is not set up right.

What would have worked better was to just swap out the spider gears. Pull the carrier out that had been welded, remove the spiders and install your good spiders in that carrier. No set-up would have been needed if you keep the carrier/ring gear with its original pinion and housing. Spider gears can be interchanged without effecting set-up.

xjtrailrider is correct. on the other hand, it could be quite a bit of work trying to break the welded spiders without breaking the carrier.

95meangreen......hopefully you didn't just dump the carrier that you pulled out of there. you CAN NOT just swap carriers around like you do tires. so your best bets are

1) put the axle back together with the parts you took out of it. since it's a disco axle, the welded front will only affect you while you have the front disco engaged. with it disengaged, you won't notice.

2) put the carrier that was in that axle back in, and carefully put the carrier bearing caps back on (LOOK VERY CAREFULL UNTIL YOU FIND THE MARKINGS OF HOW THEY GO BACK ON).. then somehow find a way to break the welds on the spiders without breaking the carrier. once you have them out, you can just take the spider gears from your old axle and transfer them to the new axle.

PS: that's why you got the axle for "basically for free". because it was welded. D30's do get a little more money than "basically free" when there is nothing wrong with them.

I just did a carrier swap on my 96 and had no problems. Just keep the bearing caps with the original axle as they were machined together, do not use the caps with the replacement carrier. I wheel pretty hard and have had no issues with anything in the front end.
Replacing spider gears on a d30 is not that easy. You must take off the ring gear in orger to get the center pin out. So instead of just replacing the broken spiders I had, I just swapped carriers which were both 3.55 gears. I checked the pattern after doing just a carrier swap and everything is good to go. Been on a few trail rides and no issues yet.
As far as the carrier not spinning properly when tightened I would recheck everything. Is the driveshaft still connected? Check for anything that would cause some resistance.HTH.

Kim

scorpio_vette said:

xjtrailrider is correct. on the other hand, it could be quite a bit of work trying to break the welded spiders without breaking the carrier

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Pull the carrier out, remove the ring gear, drive the pin out, remove the center shaft, rotate the side gears around to the opening, and then either beat them with a hammer or use the smoke wrench. They will come apart but yeah its a PITA! Alot of work for a junk axle, me personnaly since I setup diffs, would just start from scratch with the non disco axle.

Not mentioned yet is to use the original RING gear. You should not mix and match ring and pinin sets, even though they are the same ratio, they will not mesh correctly. Use the old ring gear on the new carrier.