Reusing gears with bad wear pattern?

Any of you experts know if it's a bad idea to re-use gears that have an unusual wear pattern in them. I know at a minimum they'll be noisy, but if there's no broken teeth or signs of overheating could they still be weakened in some way?

The other week I found out that bad stuff has happened in my front diff. It spun a carrier bearing on the carrier itself and spit the shims out. I cleaned everything out, dimpled the carrier and slapped a new bearing and new shims in there but I couldn't get the pattern back to correct with just carrier shims. While inspecting the gears it appears this pattern has been run for some time, so something else wrong in the diff and has been for a while.

At a minimum I'll be getting a new carrier and all bearings and doing a full setup on the gears to get a good pattern, but I'm wondering if I should also be dropping the coin on a new R&P while I'm at it.

You'll be a whole-lot happier with the long term result if you bite the bullet and get the new R&P.

Without seeing the pattern you're describing and how much material has been worn off from the surfaces it's hard to say if anything has been compromised in the strength department...... but it's not likely the old R&P will be any weaker from it.

The fact remains...... if you set up old gears with a bad pattern in them to where they should be in line for a good pattern...... you're really just setting it up with another bad pattern..... there will be surfaces where the teeth won't be making contact and surfaces where the teeth are making more contact than they should because of the uneven surfaces..... if ya dig what I'm saying. Could end up being louder than before......

Thanks Troy.

It is a front axle on a non-dd, so I was thinking noise may not matter too much, but your description of the actual contact of teeth makes sense. Given what I once in a while subject those gears to, going with new gears just seems to be the logical choice.

and at less than 2 bills for a set of USA standard gears, kinda hard to justify reusing

I wouldn't have had a problem justifying reusing if everyone said it's no big deal, just a little noise... but it doesn't sound like the right way to save a little money especially since it'll take a gear setup either way.

I'm one of those people that went with used gears in the hopes of saving some $. Don't do it! The noise gets old quick.