Front D44 Ring/Pinion and upgrades

[scbronco]

alright, im gonna swap from 3.50's to 4.56's front and rear. ive already got the front out and disassembled. i also completely did the r&p swap already, only to find out i needed a new carrier, since 3.92 and numerically higher requires a a carrier with a different offset. well, the carrier showed up today, so since i am starting from scratch again, this time im going to document. so far i removed the spiders from the old carrier, and reinstalled them in the new one. also i put the ring gear on the new carrier.






you can see the difference in offset between the two carriers. the one on the riight(with the gear installed, is the new, correct, part for 3.92+ gears. mine are 4.56

note: i used a 4" + punch (read cut-off screwdriver) to pound out the roll pin that holds the spider shaft on the carrier. the shaft slipped right out after the roll pin was removed.

when installing the ring gear, i slipped it over the carrier from the bottom up so that the teeth were facing the floor, not my face. didnt seat the gear right away, threaded each bolt in just a couple turns so that the gear was hanging by the bolts. then using a criss cross tighten each bolt a little at a time until the gear was seated. torqued to 55 ft/lbs...

[broncosbybart]

A quick FYI- it is recommended to heat the ring gear at a low temp (in your house oven, of course) and it will slip right on the carrier. DON'T FORGET to loctite those ring gear bolts. I use new ones each time I do an install.

Now comes the fun part. Don't forget to check the gear pattern and backlash at a couple point around the ring gear.

[chuzie]

Ditto what bart said. those bolts WILL stretch so grab new ones. cheap insurance IMO. if you heat the ring gear and leave the carrier outside in these nice cool temps, that sucker will slide on like butter.

[scbronco]

yeah, the wife would frown on putting oily parts in the oven... she has a sensitive sniffer LOL! it seemed to work how i did it though. is there a risk of damaging anything? or is that just the easier way?

thanks for the tip, i hadnt thought about doing it at multiple points, but it makes sense...

[blazinchuck]

nah, as long as you seated the ring gear...your fine...it does make it easier(but ive never done it myself)

[scbronco]

sweet, well more to come after Christmas...

[scbronco]

i got back into it this afternoon, and i am well pleased witht the results... I had already made myself some set-up bearings, and started the trial and error with the pinion depth. it only took about 4 tries and i had it about .005" too close to the ring which was right where i wanted it, as i learned last time that i lose about that much when i prelaod the pinion bearings. so with that done i went ahead and pressed on the new bearings and set the pinion prelaod and moved to the carrier.

this is where the learning began... i got the backlash in spec after about 6 tries, and decided that the preload on the carrier was pretty good too, so i took it back out and got ready to press on the new bearings. once i got em' pressed on, and dropped it back in the case, my backlash went from .007" to .011". one thousandth out of spec... after some advice from chuck i decided since there was no way i was getting those carrier bearings back off, i would try adding .003" under the pinoin and see if that would set things right. after doing this and getting everything back together, i got .006", on the tight side, but in spec. the best part is the pattern got way better...

i got pics of the first gear pattern, but the camera died before i could get good pics of the improved pattern. i sprayed some oil on everything to protect it while it was sitting waiting on the camera to charge, so the pattern in the improved pics has some runs in it... but you'll get the point..

first pattern




improved pattern with oil runs...




it looked way better before i spreayed that oil, there was almost 2 millimeters of yellow at the tip. the bare spot on each tooth is pretty much centered on the tooth face, maybe 1 mm towards the tip from perfectly centered...

so the lesson learned was check the pattern BEFORE pressing on new bearings. all in all, for my fist time trying this, i think it turned out pretty good. but feel free to correct me...

[broncosbybart]

Pattern looks good. I only check ring gear pattern in about 3 spots and am most concerned with the drive side pattern. The 9" is much easier to set up.

[bucketobolts]

Pattern looks good. I only check ring gear pattern in about 3 spots and am most concerned with the drive side pattern. The 9" is much easier to set up.

If I remember right, the low pinion 44 front diff actually pulls on the coast side of the ring set.

Any how, looks like you have got a good pattern. Great job:biggthumpup:

[chuzie]

Way to go bro! Glad to see you got it all set up. I bet you feel pretty good about yourself.