the new crush sleeve is really hard so it takes alot to start it to crush ! A pipe wrench on yoke and a long 3/4 in drive handle and socket on the nut to start it works good !

 

Yes, it takes a lot to get it to start crushing but my bearings are already tight into the races before the sleeve begins to crush. That's my problem.

 

So I recieved the crush sleeve eliminator yesterday and between the spacer and shims, still too short. So I ended up taking a chunk of pipe I had laying around and boring the inside out on my mini lathe to make it fit over the pinion. I parted it off and faced it down until I got the length I needed to put 30 inlbs of rotating force on the the pinion when torqued to 210 ft lbs. So essentially I just made my own crush sleeve eliminator. I rechecked my pattern after tightening everything down and its acceptable. Its not as great as I've done in the past but these are used gears. My backlash is .007 at the tightest spot and .010 at the loosest which I'm happy with for used gears. I torqued the threaded adjusters to 130 ft lbs. The factory service manual says 75 but I've read multiple times anywhere from 100-150 ft lbs is perfered.

All that's left now is to put the axles in and get some fluid in it. Does anybody know if the break in procedure applies to used gears? I figured I will at least take it easy on them for the first 50 miles or so and listen for by noise. That should also give the rebuilt trac loc some time to break in.

 

so you just torqued down the pinion nut and didn't check pinion bearing preload with a in.lbs. torque wrench ? the way you did it it is shadetree *** backwards which means it will never last and create parts failure !

 

did you read my post at all? I put in a crush sleeve eliminator which is essentially just a solid spacer shimmed to the correct length. I set it up so when the pinion nut is torqued to 210 ft lbs, there is 30 in lbs of rotating torque on the pinion bearings. So yes the preload is set correctly. I don't half *** my ****.