Help with gear pattern and next steps

[olysan]

Hi All. I'm hoping to get some direction on next steps to improve this gear pattern.

1. Dana 35 Axle with New Detroit Truetrac LSD and new Dana SVL Ring and Pinion 3.55 ratio.
2. I used the Ratech tool to set pinion depth. The engraving on the pinion head is unreadable so I had to start from scratch by measuring the pinion head.
3. Pinion preload is 15 in/lbs
4. The pics attached are with backlash at .002

I'm not sure what my next step is here. If i move the ring gear any further towards the pinion I get 0 backlash and can feel it bind. Maybe take a little out of the pinion shim stack?
A couple of other random comments:

• I don't like the gear paint that came with the setup kit. It seems tough to get a pattern.
• The coast side looks good to me, but I'm struggling with that well defined line at the top of the drive side.
• The pattern getting transferred over to the unpainted teeth looks pretty good to my untrained eye. both coast and drive look to be getting close to full contact.

 

[Blackjack]

That looks very shallow. You need to get your backlash opened up as you will not get a readable pattern until you do.

 

[olysan]

Thanks for the reply. I will open up the backlash and take another look

 

[olysan]

That looks very shallow. You need to get your backlash opened up as you will not get a readable pattern until you do.

I moved .0050 from the ring gear side to the other side and this looks a lot better. Thoughts?

 

[jonny jeep]

Still too shallow. Pinion needs moving closer to the ring gear. I've only done one rebuild myself so I can't give an idea how many thou extra you need to add to the pinion.

 

[Blackjack]

You need to add at least .010 pinion shim as you are very shallow.

 

[olysan]

You need to add at least .010 pinion shim as you are very shallow.

I will give that a try next week when I get back

 

[olysan]

You need to add at least .010 pinion shim as you are very shallow.

I made some progress this afternoon. I added .0325 in 3 steps. +0.0125, +0.0125, +0.0075. It looks to me like the last 0,0075 went just a little too far. What do you guys think?

 

[Blackjack]

You are correct. You need to go back a touch.

 

[olysan]

You are correct. You need to go back a touch.

How does this look? Why do my coast and drive look so much different, and why is my coast towards the toe while the drive is towards the heel?

 

[Rickyd]

How much did you move? Looks like you want to add a few thou. Make sure backlash is in spec every time as well

 

[olysan]

How much did you move? Looks like you want to add a few thou. Make sure backlash is in spec every time as well

Started out with a total thickness 0.0560 under the Pinion bearing race. Next dropped that to 0.0515. That still looked to deep but I didn't take a picture. Last step was to 0.0450, and I'm pretty sure I overshot. Based on the pics above. Backlash is perfect at the moment.

 

[olysan]

I think these are looking pretty good, what do you guys think. Total pinion race shim thickness is 0.0485 so I moved .0040 deeper.