Diff setup troubles

jeepjay · Post by **jeepjay** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:24 pm

if you could come up with a pinion depth gauge you could set your pinion to the depth that is marked on the end of the pinion. a standard dana 44 pinion depth is 2.625 from the face of the pinion to the centerline of the carrier plus or minus what is marked on the end of the pinion which could be +2 or -5 or could just be a 0 this would give you a good starting baseline from which to work from, I have found that used gears will sometimes give you a not picture perfect pattern due to the fact that they have been run and create there own wear patterns over time

Post by **wesk** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 11:38 pm

That's a very good point. Face wear on the teeth will alter forever the footprint of those teeth. Therefore it stands to reason that since the drawings showing best tooth pattern are based on new gear sets on excessively worn units this may not be attainable and you will have to settle for the best pattern you can get without exceeding the pinion preload limits and the carrier end play limits.

Balvar24 · Post by **Balvar24** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 8:31 am

All of this is making me terribly anxious about my impending D44 rebuild/overhaul.

RimfireJim · Post by **RimfireJim** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 4:35 pm

I was hoping we would be able to just use the difference in the pinion +/- marked value as a starting point for setting up our new gears, but unfortunately the new pinion does not have any numbers like that marked on it

The old one was either +1 or -1, can't remember which off the top of my head. I figure we'll just use the old shim stack thickness as a starting point and see where it goes from there.

Balvar24: don't be scared off by all this unless you don't have the patience for precision fitting and trial and error, but you DO need the proper tools for the job, including a dial indicator, feeler gauges, and torque wrenches.

-Jim