Dana 35 Pinion Seal Replacement

I recently pickup up another TJ with a weeping pinion seal on the dana 35, so I decided to through a $10 seal at it. Full disclosure, I know I'm taking a short cut here by replacing the seal without replacing the crush washer, but I'm trying to preserve a newly paved driveway and I don't have the time to remove the carrier in the immediate future.

I did try to go about this in most scientific hack way possible and before removing the pinion nut I did the following:
- center-punched the relationship between the pinion, nut, and yoke at the pinion's 6 o'clock position.
-used calipers to measure the distance between the top of the pinion and the top of the nut at 9 and 3 o'clock positions in an effort to confirm the nut will be back to the same depth/position. (.22, .21)
-counted the number of exposed threads above the nut (4 threads)
-counted the number of turns required to remove the pinion nut. (14.5 turns)

Here is where things get interesting.

I was curious about the torqued value of the nut so before disturbing the nut from its installed position, using a shitty torque wrench I incrementally increased the setting on the torque wrench until the nut ever so slightly loosened. The value reached was only 35ft-lbs. I took the nut off and reinstalled with a good wrench and it took a value of 35# to set the nut back to its noted relationship with the pinion and yoke per the above. At face value, this torque seems so minimal, but the axle was good, no noises, no play in the yoke, just a very slight weep of the seal. It doesn't exhibit any symptoms of the nut backing off at all in the 2k miles that I've driven it.

My other TJ has a 44 and is the only comparison I have at the moment. The nut looks similar in terms of thread count to the dana 35.

This got me thinking - Is there a scenario where after using a torque of say 160ish ft-lbs to initally compress the crush sleeve, the preload then results in a torque of roughly 35ft-lbs on the pinion nut once the sleeve collapses?

Any one have any related experience with this?

The plan is to apply loctite to the nut on final assembly but again I was put off by the low torque on the nut so I haven’t completed the job. I agree that the figure sounds way low but there was no issues with the axle that would indicate a problem with preload/bearings. I was apprehensive to increase the torque and potentially create a problem.

I haven’t increased the torque and tried, although if it does drastically increase the rotational force required, I’m cooked at that point because there’s no going back.

I hate the thought of arbitrarily increasing the torque on the pinion nut, but I don’t feel this is correct and it sounds like you all agree. Thinking out loud, I could measure the current rotational force as assembled at the pinion nut and incrementally increase the torque setting until a change in rotational force is noted? I don’t know where that will ultimately land for a torque value on the nut, but is there a general consensus of a value (75-100#) that is tight enough provided it doesn’t increase the force required to rotate?

Thanks for the sanity check everyone. I think I’m going to get a new nut, gradually torque it while checking rotational drag. Hopefully get it to 160-180# with loctite. I’ll keep and eye on it and redo the crush sleeve after the holidays.

Just to close out this thread, everyone’s instinct was spot on and the advice was solid.
I had the opportunity to speak with Tom Woods Shafts so I asked them as well.
Their advice and apparently a fairly common practice is torque to 160ft-lbs and red loctite the nut.

Thanks again everyone.