I got to thinking after looking at the photos on my desktop. This is just a thought, but we never actually found the best pattern possible for a gear setup. What I mean is, take away your desire to have it slightly deep and find what would be a perfect pattern on any other gear set. Only then would we be able to quantify how much deeper we need it. How deep is "slightly" for according to Ben? Does he want 3 thou deep? 5 thou deep? 10 thou deep? What is the number he is looking for? Even if we had it, we wouldn't be able to accurately add it in without first finding the best pattern this gear set has to offer. Make sense?
You bracketed early on, but didn't continue to bracket to dial in to the middle. We just can in from the deep side and said it looks good (which it does). But how far away is shallow from where you are right now?
Just food for thought while I was staring at the pics...
I did run quite a few more patterns, but did not post them all. Concentrating on the drive side, here are a few more from deepest to shallowest in sequence:
Starting way deep: This was prior to adding the pinion shim, but no carrier shims at all. This is when I thought I needed to be somewhere between 0 and 10 thou, but could not get there as my smallest shim is the 10.
The first pattern after adding the pinion shim. Still way deep:
3 thou less deep:
The next 3 were posted earlier, but the next in the series getting incrementally more shallow:
And finally, from the pre-pinion shim setup, so not apples to oranges, but I think this was 2 or 3 thou (an educated guess) more shallow than the 50:
And crazy shallow:
And just for kicks, crazy crazy shallow:
Looking at it - somewhere along the line I crossed the perfect depth, but perhaps the jump between the 50-4.5 and the 10-5 (between which I added the pinion shim) was greater than the 2-3 thou I am estimating. Do you think that perfect pattern is between those two? I can easily go up from the 50 to see what happens as the pattern approaches the 10-5.
Maybe that is worth the effort. What do you think?
Ben did not specify specific how much deeper, just to be on the deeper side of a good pattern. I emailed him several patterns over the weekend, and I hope to speak with him this week. I'll see if he can be a bit more specific, but I'm hoping he will be able to pick a good pattern.