Dana 44 rebuild... Time to set up the gears, advice needed

[Nightstick]

Well, I'm knee deep in the shimming portion of this axle and man is it a tedious thing to do. So far I have too little backlash, and not enough preload on my pinion. First I had too much, now I have too little. That's how it goes though.

I realize it's a one step at time thing, but since I don't have the correct tools to do everything yet I just wanted to check the pattern to see how it was. For those of you that have done this, how do you hold the pinion when torquing it? How did you load the pinion to get the correct pattern?

 

[addicted]

I made a tool for holding the yoke on my D20 when I rebuilt it but I bet it would work for a D44 too. Just some flat stock folded in half with a couple bolts.

 

[addicted]

Im about to start building my D44 soon so Im sure I'll be hitting you up for info and advice. Hope you dont mind ;D

 

[Nightstick]

I'm mainly going by billavista's write up, but I did find another set of instructions from Dana/Spicer. Other than the blunder with the knuckle removal it's gone pretty smooth. There's no way to simplify the set-up portion, it's tedious and ya just gotta keep doing it over and over again.

http://www2.dana.com/pdf/AXSM-0053.pdf