Gear Gurus....How do these look?

This past Friday I picked up a HP30 stuffed with 4.56s, a Powertrax Lockrite and 297 shafts with tacked caps. I pre-sold the locker and shafts and ended up with the 4.56s already set up in the housing for $75. When we picked the axle up, 5 hours away in VA, we did a terrible visual inspection. We noticed the pinion leaked, no big deal. Once we got home, we realized the pinion bearing is BEYOND gone. I'm talking 1/8" or more play in and out and about a 1/16" side to side. The axle was obviously run like this (he pulled it the night before) and the gears seem to be okay.

Here's some pics.

Axle starting to be cleaned.


Locker.



Ring gear. You can see how there is a couple different patterns. It seems as though the pinion pushed away from the ring gear under load causing the major pattern and the smaller one is from coasting.



Pinion. Just has some marks on the oil splasher thinger. Other than that it seems okay.



My question to you guys is this. Is this ring/pinion set okay to run in this front axle application? If it was a rear axle I wouldn't hesitate to get new gears. My brother knows how to set up gears, so all I need to do is get a master install kit. That is, if these are okay. I figure that since these are in a front axle they would be okay.

So whats the scoop?

i'm no gear guru but so long as there's no bad gashes or teeth missing i would say : run em!
maybe the setup of the r&p shouldv'e included a new $3.99 crush sleeve for the proper preload on the pinion bearing end result in this abnormal wear,
this is over looked alot by gear shops that get in to big of a hurry..

JLane99XJ said:

i'm no gear guru but so long as there's no bad gashes or teeth missing i would say : run em!
maybe the setup of the r&p shouldv'e included a new $3.99 crush sleeve for the proper preload on the pinion bearing end result in this abnormal wear,
this is over looked alot by gear shops that get in to big of a hurry..

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doesnt the hp30 use depth shims to set preload, rather than a crush sleeve?

Looks good. but your pics only show the coast side of the ring gear and not the drive side in detail. but for the most part it looks to be in decent shape. do a real good inspection on all the bearings. its for the $75 for a master install kit while you have the thing appart to toss new bearings into it... cheap insurance.
you mostly want to look for the obvious like pitting, chunks missing, sharpened edges and such. but yeah, use em.

I have no clue -- but isn't there some kind of marking process that makes a pattern you can check? I've only seen it done, but supposedly it makes certian everything is lined up and the gears run optimal/quiet. That way you know right?

Anyway, I just posted to say kudos to you for doing the gears. I'd not try it myself.

Rawbrown said:

Looks good. but your pics only show the coast side of the ring gear and not the drive side in detail. but for the most part it looks to be in decent shape. do a real good inspection on all the bearings. its for the $75 for a master install kit while you have the thing appart to toss new bearings into it... cheap insurance.
you mostly want to look for the obvious like pitting, chunks missing, sharpened edges and such. but yeah, use em.

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Are you sure about that? The other side of the gears had pretty much no wear pattern visible.

The carrier bearings are real good, just the pinions are toast. Is it a possibility to swap in new pinion bearings and the same amount of shims and have it give a good pattern?

Wescam, thats gear marking compound. It is used when setting up the gears to get a god wear pattern, it usually looks like a hotdog. On my gears you can see that the wear pattern is visible in the ring gear from use and that it isnt an optimal pattern by any means.

The HP D30 is a reverse cut gearset. the concave side of the ring gear teath is the coast side. thats the side that you took the 2 closeups of. it gets most of itw wear when in 2wd on the hwy. thats the pattern your looking at. but what I can make out of the first pic for a pattern on the drive side shows that the pinion was a bit shallow and the backlash was loose. there is no/very little wear on it because its never gets work other that in 4wd, how often was that?
Yes replace the pinion bearings with the same shims. but I get a funny feeling that whoever setup the front gearset didn't know what they were doing or something. how do you kill both pinion bearings? not properly preloading the pinion using the correct thickness of shims? get it built right and you should be fine...

Rawbrown said:

The HP D30 is a reverse cut gearset. the concave side of the ring gear teath is the coast side. thats the side that you took the 2 closeups of. it gets most of itw wear when in 2wd on the hwy. thats the pattern your looking at. but what I can make out of the first pic for a pattern on the drive side shows that the pinion was a bit shallow and the backlash was loose. there is no/very little wear on it because its never gets work other that in 4wd, how often was that?
Yes replace the pinion bearings with the same shims. but I get a funny feeling that whoever setup the front gearset didn't know what they were doing or something. how do you kill both pinion bearings? not properly preloading the pinion using the correct thickness of shims? get it built right and you should be fine...

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Do you want me to get close up pics of the other side? The pinion bearing closest to the yoke was the one destroyed. The other one seemed alright to me. I believe they where Genuine Gear gears and the previous owner is looking for the reciept for me. Isn't Genuine Gear the one who gives a lifetime warrenty no matter what? Probably because they are a cheap gearset. If I can get a new gearset under warrenty then i'll do that, if not, I guess i'll run em with a master install kit and hope for the best.

then that sounds right. with the outer pinion bearing shot, it was allowing the pinion to be "sucked" into the ring gear thus causing the bit o wear you are seeing. but under load, the inner pinion bearing is doing its job and keeping the pinion in an ok position. i don't think it was run very long with the bad pinion bearing. they might limit it to the original owner only. good luck.

Timmay said:

Do you want me to get close up pics of the other side? The pinion bearing closest to the yoke was the one destroyed. The other one seemed alright to me. I believe they where Genuine Gear gears and the previous owner is looking for the reciept for me. Isn't Genuine Gear the one who gives a lifetime warrenty no matter what? Probably because they are a cheap gearset. If I can get a new gearset under warrenty then i'll do that, if not, I guess i'll run em with a master install kit and hope for the best.

Click to expand...