So I went ahead and ordered the gears for my truck. I am going from 3.55 to 4.11. I have done gears before in college classes and once before on my mustang, but not enough to be comfortable to do them on my own and in a timely fashion so I asked a friend of mine to help me set them up. The condition was that I pull the axles from the truck and take them to him. So I went ahead and removed them. I am going to post up pics and what I do over the course of this project and share with everyone.
So here we go. Here are pics of the new gears. I went with all USA Standard brand gears and kits. Did research and determined for my pricing and reviews this was the better choice. Optimal choice was Yukon but too much $$$$.






First I jacked up the truck a supported it by the trailer hitch. My jacks weren't tall enough to catch the frame so the hitch was next best option. Seems to be doing fine



Then I continued to remove the axle. I took pictured but I will have to upload later. They are on a camera these are all off of my phone.

Today after work I came home and supported the the front end on 3 stands.






The front stand doesn't have any weight just extra precaution since the engine is in front of all the other stands. And yes these pictures were taken after the axles were already out. I am bad for not taking pictures while I am working. Hence I have no pictures of my progress except after. I have it all out. I will try to do better job at that during the gear install.

 

My brake drums were rusted on so I toyed with idea of removing the axles until I broke the cross pin bolt (open diff).



So with time, a big hammer, a torch, and wd-40 the drums came off.
Rear axle pics will come later.

With the front axle I started on the passenger side with my brother. Jacked it up and removed the tire and brakes. In bolted the tie rod, shock, trac bar, sway bar, and removed the control arm nuts. We put spring clamps on the coils then proceeded to drop the pass. Side until I could remove the spring. After that we supported the axle on a wood block and moved to the driver side. Repeated the same process on the driver side and unbolted the drive shaft from the diff.
Left the driver side supported by the jack and disconnected the arms from the axle. Then went back to the passenger side and took it off the wood and set it on my creeper then removed the arms and we drug it out from under the truck. The track bar just slid itself from its pocket as the passenger side dropped down. This is how the front looks now.









We were trying to get the axle out as fast as possible so the it still has oil in it and everything is still attached to the truck side but just removed on the axle side.

Here are the axles now

 

Cool thread! When do you expect to get your axles back?

 

Hopefully we will be done with gears by Saturday sometime. Aiming to have it back on the road by next week. Currently driving my dads Chevy while it is down. Depends how long I am sick for though. Woke up sick this morning.

 

No updates yet. I got the axles pulled and in the bed of the truck then spent everyday since then in bed sick. I will post up more when I get back to working on it.

 

Feel better man.

 

Thanks Hey You.
I finally started on the axles Tuesday night. We started with the fist axle. Now I started taking pictures half way through Tuesday night and then forgot to take some tonight. I will try to explain what we did with detail.
We set the axle on some stands and drained the fluid. Then proceeded to remove the shafts and hubs along the CAD. Which I found out mine is bent on diaphragm housing. And I broke a vacuum line. We then checked what the starting backlash was. Once done I stamped the carrier bearing caps on the bottom. One side with a single dot and the other has 2 dots. I also made corresponding marks on the housing as to orient the caps correctly and back on correct side and removed them. We removed the carrier and set it aside.






We then inverted the axle so the yoke was facing up and removed the but and yoke. Set them aside and proceeded to use and air hammer to drive the pinion out. Once everything was out we removed the pinion seal and then the bearing. With the housing empty we went to work on the carrier. Using an air grinder we cut the old bearings off being careful to not nick the case. With those off the guy I that was helping who did this for a living said to start with the same shims removed but since preload was originally too tight I removed the smallest one. He then had me use a wood block, old race, and a sledge to seat the new bearings on the case. After we removed the 3.55 ring gear and put on thr 4.11 gears. Now we turned our attention to the pinion. We. It the bearing off the old pinion so we could use the original shim for pinion depth. Once off we placed it on the new pinion and pressed the new bearing on.
Now the carrier and pinion done we went back to the case and removed the old races and using a bearing driver and hammer pressed new races in. With this all done we put the pinion in with new crush using the old nut and no seal we crushed the sleeve and set pinion preload. Once done with that came pain staking task of backlash. We would start with placing the carrier back in. We did this several times to add or remove shims using a bearing puller to remove the bearings. After several times we called it a night Tuesday night due to frustration. Much like I think I will here. I am falling asleep typing this so please forgive me for any typos.
Here the pictures I took of the front axle.



Last picture is with new pinion in. When setting everything we soaked the bearings with wd40.

 

Sorry for lengthy post. More to come tomorrow when I'm not falling asleep.

 

It's a lengthy process so the post is with merit.

Well done so far. I'd like to offer a tip regarding the frustrating part of doing the shim setup. If you have the old carrier bearings and pinion inner bearing, then you should make those into setup bearings. Take a flap bit that goes in a drill. Use that to hone out the inner race. You take enough off such that the bearing just slips on/off the carrier and the pinion. Then the only effort is lifting in/out the carrier.

I am curious about having already set the pinion with crush sleeve ahead of determining the mesh pattern. Are you following the factory service manual steps?

Here is a thread I did for larger axles, however, the same shim setup must be done as they are Dana axles. Keeping track of shim setup is tricky since backlash is very important.

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...b-install.html

good luck

 

I tend to go thru four or even five crush sleeves when setting up gears..... (depends on how lucky I get. )