9" ?? for the gear gurus

hey guys. got a third member from buddy whith about 500 miles, about half of those offroad. I was very upset when I figured out that the guy (the local jeep guru mechanic/builder) who installed d44 and 9" axles, gears and such under his jeep just used the stock jeep driveshaft without any mods. so at ride height the driveshaft was fully compressed. had to loosen the rear axle to get the driveshaft loose to remove the third member.. anyway the point of the story.
the pinion moves in and out about 1/2 inch or so. gears look ok from what I can tell. any thought as to what I should replace. I figure I will have to get all new bearings and setup. or do you think it is possible to just replace the pinion bearings, crush sleve and seal? will the crush sleve colapse that far from that kind of pressure causing the slack that I have? thanks guys

Yes the crush sleeve is susceptable to that kind of pressure. I would be very suspicious of a gear set that had a force hard enough to compress the crush sleeve .500". If your gears are salvagable, do yourself a favor and install a solid spacer.

There is nothing worse than having a *slight* love tap to the pinion yoke to force your pinion shaft into your carrier.

I'd also repalce the pinion bearings and take a hard look at the pinion bearing housing.

Your pinion can't move in and out just from crushing the crush sleeve further. The crush sleeve is used for holding the preload on the bearing and as it crushes further the preload increases. Either one of 2 things must happen to create slop there. (Assuming it was set up right in the first place) Either the crush sleeve gets crushed too far and as a result the bearings(or housing) get damaged or the pinion nut itself will need to loosen up. Either way take it apart and inspect everything including the bearings and either use a new crush sleeve or replace it with a solid spacer. The only difference between them is that with a crush sleeve you set your preload by tightening it down once using a massive amount of torque (300 plus foot pounds for it to crush) and it's done. If the pinion nut is taken off after that then a new crush sleeve should be used to properly set the preload again. With a solid spacer it will take a few times of putting it on and taking it off to get the preload right but once it's done you can remove and install the pinion nut without setting the preload again. You will want to start fresh with a new setup as well since the loose pinion will create excessive wear on the gears. If you can get a good pattern with acceptable backlash then they should be okay as long as a visual inspection doesn't show obvious damage or galling.

If the pinion moves a half an inch you other problems. The bearing on the nose and the two timkins make for a pretty secure setup. You may have problems in the carrier too. Even without the nose bearing installed, with proper backlash on the R&P the pinion should not be able to move 1/2 inch.

You can pull the pinion support and check the bearings. You might even correct the problem with the pinion but I bet when you do you will have other issues. If the pinion 1/2 inch back and forth when mounted, I would not trust anything the guy did and I would pull it completely apart and look it over real good.

well I took it to a guy that I know does excellent work and he took it all apart. all the pinion bearings were about to fall out including the pilot bearing. housing, pinion support and gears still look fine. luckily it didn't have that many miles on it. he is setting it up for me now as we speak. he actually just joined here recently his name is john lemoine.