Redneck locker install & pattern check

[hear]

XJ buddy wanted to install a locker in his front low pinon Dana 30. I already knew how this was gonna go, but my job in this friendship is to tell him how he SHOULD do it, then he decides what corners he’s gonna cut. Honestly, he makes me wonder why we do things the hard way sometimes, but whatevs. He’s the sort who is like “how could 10 thousandths possible matter.” So here we are.

Pulled the old carrier out….never had one in there so tight before, and there was almost zero backlash. Note, these axles were marketplace sourced and the rear ring/pinion blew up on him last year.

We pulled the bearings off the carrier and found 0.035 shims on one side and 0.30 on the other, both were behind the bearings. New install kit had outside-the-bearing shims so we pressed on the new bearings on the locker and matched the shim stack outside the race. It went in way easy so we ended up adding about 10 thou on either side to get the preload good and the backlash was on the money.

At this point you’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned removing the pinion, and this is not an oversight in my story telling.

With the preload good & backlash good he wanted to run a pattern, so we did.

I’m sure there will be plenty to say about the half-assed technique, but I’m more interested in just how bad this pattern is.

 

[hear]

Before we even started I told him, we're almost certainly going to have to move the pinion depth; you're never going to get lucky enough to have everything magically line up after replacing the open carrier with a true trac. And based on this pattern, I'm right, but he said send it so it's sent.

Stay tuned for the story of how his front diff grenaded at SMORR in 2 weeks.

 

[Rickyd]

Before we even started I told him, we're almost certainly going to have to move the pinion depth; you're never going to get lucky enough to have everything magically line up after replacing the open carrier with a true trac. And based on this pattern, I'm right, but he said send it so it's sent.

Stay tuned for the story of how his front diff grenaded at SMORR in 2 weeks.

No reason you can't easily swap carriers if you match the old backlash spec. But man,that pinion needed a bunch more shim when it was assembled the first time

 

[hear]

Backlash was effectively zero when we took it out.

But I also can’t figure out why I needed so much more preload shim when it was really tight initially. The only difference was shims behind/in front of the bearings.

 

[sab]

Off topic, but I’m wondering about how your relationship with your XJ buddy works, since you frequently talk about him. He seems to repeatedly come to you for help, presumably because he considers you knowledgeable, but then he discounts your advice and does it “his way.” Either that, or he does it his way, making things worse, and then he comes to you for help. You’re a better man than I because after he did this a second time, I’d stop advising him. Is he a brother-in-law?

 

[TheBoogieman]

Stay tuned for the story of how his front diff grenaded at SMORR in 2 weeks.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

Backlash was effectively zero when we took it out.

But I also can’t figure out why I needed so much more preload shim when it was really tight initially. The only difference was shims behind/in front of the bearings.

Variation in width of carriers and relationship between bearing journals and ring gear mounting surface. It (and corresponding variability in the housings) are the whole reason we deal with carrier shims. I would be more surprised if you were able to do it without messing with the shim stack, even if it had been good to start with.

 

[hear]

Off topic, but I’m wondering about how your relationship with your XJ buddy works, since you frequently talk about him. He seems to repeatedly come to you for help, presumably because he considers you knowledgeable, but then he discounts your advice and does it “his way.” Either that, or he does it his way, making things worse, and then he comes to you for help. You’re a better man than I because after he did this a second time, I’d stop advising him. Is he a brother-in-law?

He’s my best friend, but we have two extremely different backgrounds so we approach things two different ways. I’m the city boy know it all engineer who reads 10:1 for every task performed, and he’s the redneck who reads 1:10 for every task performed and errs on the side of send it. He’s the yin to my yang.

No, we aren’t lovers in the night.

we have an understanding- each of us does repairs on the other’s truck how WE would do the repair on our truck, no questions asked. For example, I always pull out the torque wrench, and he’s good with “feels tight.” But I balance him by knowing the spec and giving him a qualitative “hella tight” or “just past hand tight” or whatever. And he understands that repairing the Lexus radiator required a softer touch than when we did his TJ radiator.

I think his general philosophy is that a much of what the manual says is overkill. Good old boys have been repairing trucks in their field for years w/o dial gauges Internet forums, so he tends to underplay things like precision requirements. But the flip side is that he’s not afraid to start in on a complicated repair whereas I would be paralyzed until I had read 100 threads and watched 5 YouTubes….meanwhile his rig is already back out on the road. He’s also the first to get under somebody else’s rig to get dirty & greasy and has a knack for getting this really really tricky bolts out. He’s the best sort of friend to have.

I don’t expect anyone here to agree with his style, but I don’t have much evidence to say that his way is bad. Rarely does his method result in a bad repair, or at least not any more often than our combined lack of skill. I also probably only post the most extreme examples, and I generally don’t mention if I’ve gone to him for help, but my posts are often in the 1st person plural (we did this, we tried that etc).

He would also get out of bed at 3am and drive 8 hrs if you couldn’t find your 10mm socket, and would ask only 2 questions: what’s the address, and do you need me to bring anything else?

 

[freedom_in_4low]

Before we even started I told him, we're almost certainly going to have to move the pinion depth; you're never going to get lucky enough to have everything magically line up after replacing the open carrier with a true trac. And based on this pattern, I'm right, but he said send it so it's sent.

Stay tuned for the story of how his front diff grenaded at SMORR in 2 weeks.

You didn't move the axis the carrier spins on, so the pinion depth will come out exactly as good or bad as it started.

I lost 2 axles to bad pinion depth... Not much experience but I suspect that will kill a set of gears even more expediently than preload or backlash. Makes me wonder if he wasn't gonna do anything about it, why have you check the pattern at all?

 

[BlueC]

He seems to repeatedly come to you for help, presumably because he considers you knowledgeable, but then he discounts your advice and does it “his way.” Either that, or he does it his way, making things worse, and then he comes to you for help.

That sounds like my mother. Should I write her off? You know what, I'll take your advice and just give it a try.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

He’s my best friend, but we have two extremely different backgrounds so we approach things two different ways. I’m the city boy know it all engineer who reads 10:1 for every task performed, and he’s the redneck who reads 1:10 for every task performed and errs on the side of send it. He’s the yin to my yang.

No, we aren’t lovers in the night.

we have an understanding- each of us does repairs on the other’s truck how WE would do the repair on our truck, no questions asked. For example, I always pull out the torque wrench, and he’s good with “feels tight.” But I balance him by knowing the spec and giving him a qualitative “hella tight” or “just past hand tight” or whatever. And he understands that repairing the Lexus radiator required a softer touch than when we did his TJ radiator.

I think his general philosophy is that a much of what the manual says is overkill. Good old boys have been repairing trucks in their field for years w/o dial gauges Internet forums, so he tends to underplay things like precision requirements. But the flip side is that he’s not afraid to start in on a complicated repair whereas I would be paralyzed until I had read 100 threads and watched 5 YouTubes….meanwhile his rig is already back out on the road. He’s also the first to get under somebody else’s rig to get dirty & greasy and has a knack for getting this really really tricky bolts out. He’s the best sort of friend to have.

I don’t expect anyone here to agree with his style, but I don’t have much evidence to say that his way is bad. Rarely does his method result in a bad repair, or at least not any more often than our combined lack of skill. I also probably only post the most extreme examples, and I generally don’t mention if I’ve gone to him for help, but my posts are often in the 1st person plural (we did this, we tried that etc).

He would also get out of bed at 3am and drive 8 hrs if you couldn’t find your 10mm socket, and would ask only 2 questions: what’s the address, and do you need me to bring anything else?

I fall much more in your camp, but because of experience.

When I was 19 I repacked a left front wheel bearing on my 280Z. Don't remember exactly why, but it's not important.

I had recently done the CV axles on my brother's Prelude. I went in with confidence and without considering that a tapered roller bearing isn't the same as a ball unit bearing, and I went with "hella tight".

I immediately set out to go hang out with my GF and made it about 15 miles before the bearing, spindle, and hub melted into one single piece of steel and tried it's damnedest to yank me into oncoming traffic while I just managed to get halfway off the road to a stop and found big smoky orange flames pouring out of where the grease cup had been.

I don't know if the acronym RTFM had been coined yet in 2002 but that's when I learned to Read the Fing Manual and I make sure I understand the process before I start..

 

[sab]

That sounds like my mother. Should I write her off?

No, not at all. My last sentence to hear was: "Is he a brother-in-law?" The point of that was that we sometimes have to repeatedly deal with people we normally wouldn't, and family is a strong bond (or should be). The behavior I was mentioning is definitely not "break-the-ties-that-bind"-worthy. There are times that you have to break those bonds. Repeatedly not listening to good advice regarding car repairs ain't one of those.

You know what, I'll take your advice and just give it a try.

Heavens, no! Blood is thicker than water, my friend!

He’s my best friend,

'nuff said. Best friends get the same treatment as blood relatives.

 

[hosejockey61]

XJ buddy wanted to install a locker in his front low pinon Dana 30. I already knew how this was gonna go, but my job in this friendship is to tell him how he SHOULD do it, then he decides what corners he’s gonna cut. Honestly, he makes me wonder why we do things the hard way sometimes, but whatevs. He’s the sort who is like “how could 10 thousandths possible matter.” So here we are.

Pulled the old carrier out….never had one in there so tight before, and there was almost zero backlash. Note, these axles were marketplace sourced and the rear ring/pinion blew up on him last year.

We pulled the bearings off the carrier and found 0.035 shims on one side and 0.30 on the other, both were behind the bearings. New install kit had outside-the-bearing shims so we pressed on the new bearings on the locker and matched the shim stack outside the race. It went in way easy so we ended up adding about 10 thou on either side to get the preload good and the backlash was on the money.

At this point you’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned removing the pinion, and this is not an oversight in my story telling.

With the preload good & backlash good he wanted to run a pattern, so we did.

I’m sure there will be plenty to say about the half-assed technique, but I’m more interested in just how bad this pattern is.



View attachment 556301

View attachment 556302View attachment 556303

If ALL your doing is replacing the carrier with a locker, then you should be able to simply swap them. No need to pull the pinion. The lack of pinion preload is the fact that the gears and bearings are broken in. Pre-load is an install spec. Where it ends up is where it ends up depending on how things break in.

Bring that these are used gears with a lot of miles, even if you can get the pattern better, I wouldn't change it. They are already work hardened and changing anything will certainly lead to their failure.

When I swap carriers, I run a pattern as a reference and check backlash to start. Then I swap the ring gear over and get the backlash to what it was. In your case with it being zero, I would put the same shim stack that came out of each side and then run a pattern to see if it matches what I took out. It's a big crap shoot with used gears and it will be what it will be. Even if the initial factory setup isn't ideal, you can't change it now.

 

[hear]

Thanks. The challenge I saw was that with the same shim stack the carrier had lateral play. We shimmed till that went away, which had the effect of getting the backlash to around 8 thou. I guess we could move the shims to the gear side and reduce the lash, no?

I am glad to hear that you shouldn’t have to touch the pinion for this job, ordinarily.

 

[hosejockey61]

Thanks. The challenge I saw was that with the same shim stack the carrier had lateral play. We shimmed till that went away, which had the effect of getting the backlash to around 8 thou. I guess we could move the shims to the gear side and reduce the lash, no?

I am glad to hear that you shouldn’t have to touch the pinion for this job, ordinarily.

You could add shims to increase carrier pre-load, but I would only add enough so there is no play.

 

[hear]

You could add shims to increase carrier pre-load, but I would only add enough so there is no play.

ok, well that's exactly what we did. The net effect was that the backlash increased to what I would have set it at had these been new gears. Sounds like for all the posturing done, if you're supposed to just be able to replace the carrier and send it then we did about as good as we could do. The fact that I convinced him to get new carrier bearings was victory enough.

 

[Rickyd]

ok, well that's exactly what we did. The net effect was that the backlash increased to what I would have set it at had these been new gears. Sounds like for all the posturing done, if you're supposed to just be able to replace the carrier and send it then we did about as good as we could do. The fact that I convinced him to get new carrier bearings was victory enough.

To keep the same backlash and add preload you put an equal amount of shims on both sides.

 

[TheBoogieman]

I don’t expect anyone here to agree with his style, but I don’t have much evidence to say that his way is bad.

I agree with it.

 

[hosejockey61]

To keep the same backlash and add preload you put an equal amount of shims on both sides.

That's good in theory, but it rarely works. It seems to always throw BL off one way or the other as things tighten up. I think everyone thinks that it's perfectly centered when it's loose and it's not.

 

[Rickyd]

That's good in theory, but it rarely works. It seems to always throw BL off one way or the other as things tighten up. I think everyone thinks that it's perfectly centered when it's loose and it's not.

Good point,but it has to start somewhere