well the big brown truck finally showed up with my gears last night, so today i went to my dad's house and started. i got the front diff out and apart and got the new ring gear on the carrier. tomorrow im gonna take the rear end apart and put the ring gear on. im gonna bring both pinions with me to work monday and swap the pinion bearing and shims over to their new pinions with the press. ill get some pics up tomorrow of the progress...

 

no pics?

 

Just got done reinstalling 4.56's in my rear after the pinion broke. Basically an all day affair since I wasn't at my own shop and I had so much "clean up" to do because of metal bits.

 

its finally warming up and I'm going to finish up my front gear swap. I have the whole diff (third member really) and I'm going to be setting it all up. I plan on getting an Aussie locker for the front. Should be pretty nice.

 

Sweet I wanna get some 4.88's!!!

 

no pics yet, i'll have some later today. im hoping the factory pinion shims will be the right thickness for the pinion depth, cuz i dont really want to keep pulling that bearing off to add/remove shims...

 

Not sure of D35's, but on 8.8's you generally need a slightly thicker pack. My original shim was about 0.028 and I'm using 0.032 on this one. My Yukons required about 0.034 to 0.036 if I recall correctly -- it was a couple of years ago.

I hope you guess as well as I did, lol. I was blessed to get it right the first time in both cases. I had read about needing to use a thicker pinion shim with high ratio gearsets in 8.8's and so I tried it. I'd be clueless on the D35.

I had to do my D44 a couple of times to get it right.

 

i dont mind having to do it a couple times, but its a pain because ill have to wait till the next day to bring it to work to use the press... o well, i rather take my time and do it right... but ill probly do what you did and put a little thicker pack to start

 

Does anyone want to teach me how to install gears. That is something that id really like to know how to do!

 

me too!

 

k got some pics, and made some progress... got the rear end out, new ring gear on the 9.75. ground the tooth on the 8.8 up front for the cross pin, didnt take much. now im at a stand still till tomorrow at work, and im thinkin about goin pick up a 12 ton press from harbor freight for 110 bucks. on with the pics:

Floating truck lol



front end minus a couple pieces:





new gears for the 9.75



and pinion size difference for the 8.8 up front, 4.56 on the left 3.55 on the right

 

Adam, you're not that far away from me. But we'd need another axle to work on. I'm not taking mine apart again if I don't have to, lol. I'd be glad to show you though.

 

hey john, you think i should make my shim pack an extra .003" or so?

 

I really don't know with the Dana 35. I only saw references to the 8.8 about going up in ratio and thickening the shim a few thousandths. It's a crapshoot.

 

yea, i wanna add a little thinking its what it needs, but everyone at work tells me to try factory shim pack first.... damned if you do damned if you don't i guess

 

well got the front set up, had a .050" shim pack and the factory carrier shims, came out perfect, got everything cleaned up and ready to assemble. tomorrow i gotta pass by ford and pic up my pinion seal and the rear shim kit. its not bad once you understand which way you need to shim everything to get a good pattern.

 

very nice man.. good work