after many months of staring at parts in boxes on the floor i finally got my gears done. not without a hassle though. turned out that all the front end parts that were ordered were wrong. so if anybody out there with a 1500 is doing gears the front end is an 8" and you only need the gears. you don't need to change out the carrier (for 410 at least). i did it just in time too cause you can see one of the clips poking out on the rear carrier. it didn't do any major damage. i'd like to thank DF and those of you who helped me out in my decision to do gears.


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thats awesome! What brand did you go with?

 

congrats. nice pics too. but we need details.
how do you like them ?
what brand gears ?
install kits ?
how much for parts ?
where ?
did you install yourself or have it done, how much ?
inquiring minds want to know

 

same here. if you did them yourself, how bad of a job was it.

 

DETAILS!!!!

 

If you did them yourself, and shimmed them so that there is no whine, you did one hell of a job!!!
I've heard tell of seasoned gear techs having to redo them 2 & 3 times till they got them to not whine..
So, props are in order here...

 

Well I can comment on my own install for now....

The biggest pain was getting the front stub shafts out of the front case after removing the half shafts. They have a special tool for this of course that I could not acquire at the time. So I had a good collection of screw drivers to help me out.
The rear was a different pain in the butt all together. I got the rear locker and gears installed fine, until I realized that I forgot to swap over the speed sensor tone ring just before I was installing the oil pan on the housing. This caused the speedo to act funny, since it was forced to sence off of the front sensors. Anyway, I didn't have the ambition or the time to take it apart and redo it so the speedo would work. So I took it to my dealer and had them redo the rear for me. I used to work there so they cut me a deal. The odd thing was that the gears made a whine sound on my install and after the dealer re-did the axle also.The tech that did the work even said I did it correctly.He said that if I had installed the speedo tone ring the first time, that there wouldn't have been a reason to redo the rear axle.
Here's some final tally figures for the guys thinking of do gear in their trucks...

Locker brand/model: Detroit TrueTrac. I love this thing. It works just like its suppose to, and you would never know you have a lockers in the rear end.
Gear brand: Genuine Gear. I would never buy these for only one reason; they have gear noise.The noise gets louder the faster you go (obviously) but you can hear it mostly when you decelerate with your foot off the pedal.
Install kits: depending on your mileage you have a few options. I only had 30k on my truck, so I replaced my axle tube bearings (behind the parking brake) and only needed the pinion seal, crush sleeve, and nut for the yoke. Shims are a nesseccity for setting the proper pinion depth. I think that was about it on install kit hardware; its been almost a year since it was done.
The cost:
Locker, gears, install kits ran me just shy of $1,000 after shipping.
Where: I bought them from 4 Wheel Parts. I figured they were deal with most models, have a good record for service, and have more than one warehouse.
The dealer install price for the rear axle: It was about $450, and I supplied all the parts they needed to redo the axle. So for that price all I got was labor. It took all day, and I know it did, becuase I helped the guy redo it, so I would learn a thing or 2 for future installs.

Did I miss anything?

 

PICTURES!!!!!!

 

ok. sorry to leave yall hanging. so many people have done gears and posted here already that i figured who wants to hear the same info all over again? so i just decided to thank everybody i nagged months ago about doing gears. anywho here ya go.

so far i like em pretty good. i think i made the right decision on 410. it solved the ******* on long grades problem and my rpms are about 2k at 70mph which i'm happy with. however, for those of you looking for some snap you need the 456s.i went from 355 to 410, so it wasn't too impressive. then again, i haven't really hammered on the throttle yet. i imagine 456s would give you a boner.
motive gears, install kits and auburn diff ran me just about $1k.
the gears and kits it got at my local speed shop. the diff i got on ebay for $356 including shipping. labor cost was $864 for everything. its the IFS that was the killer there. lots of time is wasted on suspension.
i would have really liked to do them myself, but time was really against me and i need the truck everyday. i also don't have the right facility and am missing a press and a few other special tools. in the end i figured my time invested doing it myself was worth just getting it done and i would be less the headaches and sore arms. not only thatbut the guy who did the job is one of the best around and that just made me feel better about someone else working on my truck.
i'm still in the break in phase, so i'm looking forward to some WOT action when that time comes around. 485 miles to go........

 

hey nice write up...i just ordered the Auburn LSD with a set of 4.10's for the rear, so i'm gonna make use of the hoists at CTC and do the swap on saturday