Work from home LJ

Im an idiot @hosejockey61. I ran out of disposable gloves Friday night and switched to thick mechanic gloves. Couldn’t feel a double stacked shim.

What I thought was a single tho to .038 was .044.

It’s a good idea to mic your shim stacks to verify your total thickness.
 
It’s a good idea to mic your shim stacks to verify your total thickness.

Don’t use logic. We’re here to make fun of me messing up

On a more serious note - good lesson to stop and come back to project. I was burned out on taking apart and putting back together. Should have stopped and looked at next day. It took me 2 minutes to find the error this morning.
 
Don’t use logic. We’re here to make fun of me messing up

On a more serious note - good lesson to stop and come back to project. I was burned out on taking apart and putting back together. Should have stopped and looked at next day. It took me 2 minutes to find the error this morning.

That happens a lot to me on various projects. No sweat.
 
Don’t use logic. We’re here to make fun of me messing up

On a more serious note - good lesson to stop and come back to project. I was burned out on taking apart and putting back together. Should have stopped and looked at next day. It took me 2 minutes to find the error this morning.

I have been really making a point of being better at this whenever I’m working on things. Sometimes I just want to power through it to get it done and either mess something up or miss something stupid simple that would have saved so much more time.

I’ve noticed a big difference in quality of work since I’ve slowed down and accepted that I’m not gonna get it all done at once.
 
I have been really making a point of being better at this whenever I’m working on things. Sometimes I just want to power through it to get it done and either mess something up or miss something stupid simple that would have saved so much more time.

I’ve noticed a big difference in quality of work since I’ve slowed down and accepted that I’m not gonna get it all done at once.

Me at work: no problem slowing down, take a break, clearly missing something obvious, grab a coffee and come back to it.

Me in garage: no way in hell I’m letting this project defeat me I can’t stop until it’s done
 
Me at work: no problem slowing down, take a break, clearly missing something obvious, grab a coffee and come back to it.

Me in garage: no way in hell I’m letting this project defeat me I can’t stop until it’s done

It's an interesting phenomenon. I'll keep trying with the wrong tool for a good while when I could just walk and grab the right one that would make it easy. At work I'll happily go for a bike or go for a walk and the answer comes to me.
 
It's an interesting phenomenon. I'll keep trying with the wrong tool for a good while when I could just walk and grab the right one that would make it easy. At work I'll happily go for a bike or go for a walk and the answer comes to me.

I find that sometimes that I will almost procrastinate looking for a better tool vs just figuring out how to get it done. Case in point...Over Memorial day, I went to visit my father in law. He is 90, but you'd never know it to look at him. He has a TJ with a plow that has been giving him fits, so, in preperation, I grabbed some of my diagnostic tools. He's 500 miles away from home for me....so going to get MY tools wasn't happening. Turns out, it was a crank position sensor. two bolts...how hard could that be to change? Turns out, its pretty challenging on a stock jeep. There isn't any way to get leverage on the damn tools. I dicked around with it for hours. Different wrenches, and combinations of extensions and ratchets. I even ran to HF to buy some NEW wrenches to hopefully grab the head better (not only was the angle difficult, but the head was rounded off a bit). I finally got it, and it was with the original extension and ratchet I started with...I feel like I finally just willed it out...

So, I had the "right" tool to begin with, but in an effort to make it easier, I ran around in circles all day.
 
This is .038 and the best I’ve gotten so far.

I am going to try .037 next.

I learned hard way using too much paint makes this way harder than it needs to be. Used very little this time and it’s a lot easier for me to see the pattern.

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Here’s .037. Not a ton of difference. Seems like no matter what I do I can’t get the perfect pattern.

I’ve tried .038 above, and this is .037. BL is consistent between the two. I could try .036 just to see if that lines up tad better. I think .038 is better than this.

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Even 36 still looks deep. On a Dana 30 usually I'm right around 57 thou. Do you have a slinger between the bearing and pinion head? I would find a pattern that looks too shallow and so far these aren't doing it. I thought you were close with your 38 but it doesn't seem to be changing.
 
Yes I do have a .031 slinger pressed on.

I think im pretty close now. I went all the way down to .02 and it was shallow. Im working my way back up now. I went .031 to .036 again and ensured BL was the same between them.

First two pictures are .02.

Second two are .031.

Last two are .036.

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Yes I do have a .031 slinger pressed on.

I think im pretty close now. I went all the way down to .02 and it was shallow. Im working my way back up now. I went .031 to .036 again and ensured BL was the same between them.

First two pictures are .02.

Second two are .031.

Last two are .036.

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That .031 looks to be the ticket if not .032. This crap gets old and frustrating after awhile huh😂
 
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The biggest mistake I made throughout this was not truly understanding what shallow was. I thought I knew but once I dropped all the way down to .02 yesterday it made a huge difference. Then I slowly worked my way back up. I still didnt know to go with .031 though. In my head I was thinking somewhere between the .031 and .036 I posted above.
 
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The biggest mistake I made throughout this was not truly understanding what shallow was. I thought I knew but once I dropped all the way down to .02 yesterday it made a huge difference. Then I slowly worked my way back up. I still didnt know to go with .031 though. In my head I was thinking somewhere between the .031 and .036 I posted above.

You're doing a great job learning, and you are correct in thinking it's somewhere between .031 and .036. Don't forget that since this is a low pinion front axle, we want to favor the coast side pattern. Your .031 is runnable and may very well be the best pattern you can get. But how will you know? Run one at .034 and if it's not perfect, do it again for .033 and .032. Very time consuming, but you will know they are done right. In a shop that does it for a living, time is money. That means if the pattern is close, it's usually good enough to get it out the door and start on the next project. That's why you see a LOT of places now offering a no questions asked warranty for an extra $100. 95% of the time the gears will be fine so it's money in their pocket. If it fails, it's already covered by all of the purchased warranties. Kind of like insurance.
 
Continuing to split differences (.031 to .036 here) to see best options. This is .033. Another I could probably run, but .032 is probably ideal.

Now to do some mathing to figure out how to build a .032 shim stack.

first few setups it took me forever to get the pinion out and switch up shims. Now it’s just a few minutes at most.

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