Time to document the gear swap: amateur special!
I started disassembling the old pinion and carrier from my Dana 30. First thing I did was cutoff the old carrier and pinion bearings. The inner races will be used to press the new bearings on the new pinion and carrier.
I'm trying to keep everything labelled so I don't get confused and frustrated. Setup bearings clearly marked as well:
I have everything laid out as it comes out. Since it's my first time, I don't want to be doubting myself on how the pinion goes together or anything. Left side is the old pinion stack, and the right one is all the new stuff. You can see I have the carrier shims inside the races, labelled on paper.
Look how much smaller a 5.13 pinion is than a 3.55 one. Pretty wild.
Measured all the shims from my old setup. Yes I know I wrote "small" and "big" pinion shims like an idiot. For some reason, at the time I couldn't remember why there were two sets... Big ones are for depth, small ones are for preload.
Added them up so I have a starting point when I get to setting up the new stuff:
- Pinion Depth: 0.0292. Old pinion has a +2 marking, and new pinion has nothing, so I'll add .002 and start at 0.0312
- Pinion Preload: 0.0654
- Non ring gear carrier: 0.0259
- Ring gear carrier: 0.049
Additionally, I measured both the new and old oil slingers and oil baffles, and they bought measured out the same. So I shouldn't have to adjust for them.
Next I got to work measuring shims. The carrier came with carrier shims, and so did the install kit, so I had a whole bunch of those to measure. I wiped each individually before measuring. Whew, some of these are so thin the surface tension from the packing oil will try to bend them!
The first pinion bearing got pressed on with the oil slinger, using the inner race from the old pinion:
And the rear pinion bearing race got driven in, it should not need to come back out. Man the edges of the journal are machined sharp, careful when cleaning them out!
The last thing before I can actually start the "fun" part is setting up the carrier. I have a new 3.73+ carrier from Yukon, and will need to transfer my lunchbox locker in as well.
Unfortunately this is as far as I'm getting today. The first step of installing the lunchbox is installing the axle gears and spacers, and use a feeler gauge to measure the space between the carrier pin and the spacers. You're looking for a gap between 0.006 and 0.020. However, I was unable to get my carrier pin through the new carrier. I was kinda disappointed the new carrier didn't come with a new carrier pin - although it came with new ring gear bolts and the roll pin to lock the carrier pin.
When I was down there working, I figured I had the wrong pin. But, now that I am searching, it appears there is no separate carrier pin size for the two carrier types. So I'm thinking something else is going on. There are some threads online of opening the hole up slightly to get the pin in. I don't really mind re-using my pin if it's the right one, it doesn't have any of the wear mentioned in the Aussie locker install manual that would make you want to replace it. It can get it in the old carrier with a few taps with the hammer, definitely an interference fit but it does seem to "bottom out" trying to get it through the new one. I will likely call ECGS tomorrow and see what they think. Hoping I don't need to wait for a new part, I can start actually trying to set things up when I get this together.
One question I had if anyone knows - how do you handle the ten-thousands when measuring shims? It seems like most people are looking to the thousandths of an inch, but if you look at my shim stacks I clearly got a pile of 0.003" vs 0.0035" shims, and even stranger, I got a stack of 0.0027" shims. I even recleaned them and my mic, rezero-ed the mic, and measured multiple points thinking it was wrong, but there are more than one and they double checked out.