Nightstick
Bronco guy
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2010
- Messages
- 2,929
Alright, so I set out to get my gears set up today, and I think I might be in business. Only one little issue...
I'll cover what I did first in case anyone wants to know... I had already made two attempts the other day, but my pattern was way off, drive side was on the toe, coast was on the heel. My backlash and pinion preload were both within spec. This is where I picked up today.
First I attempted to change the shims on the carrier, but ended up with too much backlash, so I had to change pinion depth and therefore preload shims. I happened to nail it the first time, by subtracting equal thickness shims from both of those. I went back to my original carrier shims and had zero backlash, messed with that a while (in, out, in, out, in, out) and ended up with both preload and backlash within spec again.
The below pic is the final pattern I got. Reading billavista's article it seems like I'm not loading it enough, which is giving me the weak contact, however the pattern looks acceptable. I used the "shove a rag covered pry bar in there" method of loading, which obviously ain't the best, and is not giving me the desired 40+ lbs of resistance. A friend suggested installing the axle with the current pattern and giving it its true load. That would be great if I knew it was gonna work, but the thought of disassembing it again, and shimming with it installed gives me nightmares. I included a pic of the pinion just so you could see what the contact looks like on it even though for set up purposes that doesn't really matter
Anyone have any other suggestions on how to load it?
I'll cover what I did first in case anyone wants to know... I had already made two attempts the other day, but my pattern was way off, drive side was on the toe, coast was on the heel. My backlash and pinion preload were both within spec. This is where I picked up today.
First I attempted to change the shims on the carrier, but ended up with too much backlash, so I had to change pinion depth and therefore preload shims. I happened to nail it the first time, by subtracting equal thickness shims from both of those. I went back to my original carrier shims and had zero backlash, messed with that a while (in, out, in, out, in, out) and ended up with both preload and backlash within spec again.
The below pic is the final pattern I got. Reading billavista's article it seems like I'm not loading it enough, which is giving me the weak contact, however the pattern looks acceptable. I used the "shove a rag covered pry bar in there" method of loading, which obviously ain't the best, and is not giving me the desired 40+ lbs of resistance. A friend suggested installing the axle with the current pattern and giving it its true load. That would be great if I knew it was gonna work, but the thought of disassembing it again, and shimming with it installed gives me nightmares. I included a pic of the pinion just so you could see what the contact looks like on it even though for set up purposes that doesn't really matter
Anyone have any other suggestions on how to load it?
