Something missed from the last post. The spider gears and pinions were a bit grungy and has to be cleaned up before re-assembly. I opted to use rags to wipe away all the dirt. Surprised that so much had accumulated.
To start I installed the new bearings on the carrier without any shims. I don’t have a big enough press so I put the bearings on using an old bearing cup and hammer. Works well with a little grease on the inside of the bearing and on the housing.
Used 3.54 ring gear installed with bolts tightened to 50 ft-lbs. I was a bit concerned that my carrier wasn’t right for the 3.54 gears. Checking on line I found that the carrier break point is 3.73 and lower before a different carrier is needed for 3.92 and higher. The way to tell is to measure between the bottom of the bearing and the flat surface that holds the ring gear. In this case it is a tad over 2″ which is right for 3.73 gears and lower. The measure for the higher gears is about 2.4″
Checking the movement of the carrier sideways.
At this point I have decided to disregard most of the procedures in the service manual. I don’t have all the special tools to follow the instructions which would in most cases would result in a near perfect pattern between the ring gear and the pinion. Instead I am going to adjust the carrier and pinion until I get good pattern between the gears. I will adjust the pinion location by moving the rear pinion bearing race and the carrier side to side with various sized shims keeping in mind I need to have the backlash between .003 and .006.
Checking the backlash.
This is a tool I made up to hold the yoke when I need to preload on the pinion. There is also a preload on the carrier bearings of .008
At this point I have adjusted the pinion closer to the ring gear by about .030 and I have put .020 of shims to the ring gear side of the carrier. This is giving me a nice pattern. Unfortunately I don’t have the shims needed for the right side of the carrier or under the rear pinion bearing cup. I am now stuck until I can get a selection of shims to finish the job.
Next: final shimming to get a nice wear pattern and acceptable backlash.