Huck's daily - 2005 Z71 crewcab

[bigcountry78]

I don’t understand the tinted windshield thing. I can barely see at night as is lol. But to each their own.

 

[TotalyHucked]

I don’t understand the tinted windshield thing. I can barely see at night as is lol. But to each their own.

Glare KILLS me at night, that’s what I mainly want it for. And heat in the summer. It won’t be much, just a super light tint.

 

[TotalyHucked]

Made some more progress last night and today. We lost power at work about 4:15 yesterday, so I took that opportunity to throw in the new races and pressed on the carrier bearings before I left at 6.

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Made up some setup bearings from the old ones. Had to run to town to find something to hone out the centers cuz I couldn’t find my Emory cloth to make a hillbilly hone or our brake hone. Grabbed a couple stones for the die grinder

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[Old77]

Glare KILLS me at night, that’s what I mainly want it for. And heat in the summer. It won’t be much, just a super light tint.

I prefer a tint on the windshield, too. I usually get 50% on my rigs

 

[TotalyHucked]

Threw the pinion and carrier in. Ran into a snag that no matter what shim combo I ran, once I tightened the caps, everything locked down tight

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I suspected the pinion was wayyy too deep, it just looked odd in that race. So I took it out and threw in just the carrier

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It’s mid-spin here, just free spinning nicely

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Yep, pinion was too deep. Oops

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[TotalyHucked]

So what I finally found was, the GM bearings were quite a bit bigger than the Koyo’s that came in the kit, so they weren’t going down in the races properly. The rear bearing was 3mm larger diameter and 1mm taller. The forward bearing was 1mm bigger around and 1/2mm taller. No wonder the pinion is too deep

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So took the new bearings and turned them into setup bearings

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Muchhh better

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[TotalyHucked]

So finally, I could check backlash and run a pattern. I have the factory .036” shim on the pinion and both factory shims on the sides of the carrier here. Spec is .06-.010, I JUST missed it

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Threw on the gear marking compound and ran my first pattern. I’ve since learned I need to mix it with some gear oil so the pattern will show better, I’ll do that tomorrow

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Not bad for the first pass! I also realized I swapped the carrier bearing caps, so that’ll also get fixed tomorrow. Gonna redo the compound and go from there, might need to make some small adjustments but for my first time, I’m happy with that

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[TotalyHucked]

On my lunch break I fixed my carrier bearing (I just flipped the pass side over upside down, the driver's side was ok), made a soupier gear compound and re-ran the pattern. Backlash is still out of spec, .0105 but the pattern isn't bad at all to start with.

It looks like the pinion could be a touch deep, but I also need to take the carrier back out and re-check the pinion drag/rotational torque with my coworker's split beam wrench. The one I bought goes to like 800in lbs and goes by 50in lb increments, so I can't accurately see where I'm at. It should be 14-19in lbs of rotational drag.

Once I do that, I think I'll start by moving the carrier to the pass side about .002-.003" to close up the backlash and that may move the pattern down into the valley a tad more too

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[TotalyHucked]

Also realized since the pinion already looks too deep and I'm also probably too tight on it, it's gonna go deeper. So between that and Spencer giving me some greatly appreciated advice, I'm gonna start with the pinion shim and take .005" out to start. Then we'll worry about moving the carrier over

 

[TotalyHucked]

Ok, so I made a couple adjustments last Friday and forgot to post them. Took .005" off the pinion shim and shifted the carrier to the passenger side .010". Came out with .010 backlash and a pretty darn good pattern. My coworker that's done several 10-bolts agreed on the pattern. Debating if I wanna shift the carrier over another .005" or so to take up some backlash or run it. I got ahead of myself unfortunately and didn't measure any of this when I took it apart, so I don't know what it had before for backlash or a pattern.

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[TotalyHucked]

So then yesterday I came up to the shop to work on the front diff since my new bearings from QP didn't show up Saturday like I'd hoped. Did I mention this truck lived on dirt roads and has an oil leak? Yeahhhh...

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Anyway, gotta get the center link and tie rods out of the way first.

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My pickle fork on my air hammer wasn't doing jack squat and I somehow had lost my manual pickle fork. So town and Hobo Freight I go. Picked up a kit with various size pickle forks and also a 16" long one in case the ones in the kit were too short. The long one did the trick, so I may take that kit back since it was $60 and I really don't have the need for them often.

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Also took the sway bar out just to give me even more room and I have new bushings/end links anyway

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[TotalyHucked]

So then I popped out the drain plug to let it start draining while I pulled the CV axle bolts out

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Fluid looked pretty good but there was a ton of schmutz on the drain plug...

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We'll just pretend like we didn't see that...

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Went to spray some PB blaster on all the bolts and couldn't find the head of the lower mount bolt, so gotta clean off the crossmember

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[TotalyHucked]

Didn't get any shots mid-pull cuz it was sketchy AF trying to get that thing to balance on the transmission jack while it also rolls off the crossmember. The crossmember goes directly across where that lower mount is, so the pinion has to rotate off as you come down. It's very simple overall, an extra set of hands definitely would've been nice though

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Yuckkk. Once the axles are done, the engine is coming out for a reseal/cam upgrade and I'll scrub the engine bay real good at the same time.

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Tried to pry/wack the long side axle out but it wouldn't budge. So off come the 15mm bolts holding the extension housing to the main housing

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[TotalyHucked]

This is all that actuates the front axle. A little shift fork and collar.

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Pass side/long side adjuster

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Driver's side/short side stub shaft came out with a gentle pry of the bar

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This is just a vent, but you gotta remove this for access to the gearset. This will be the hole we paint the gears through and judge the pattern through later

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[TotalyHucked]

Backside of the vent

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Everything looks pretty clean inside considering the schmutz we saw earlier

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Then took out the 15mm bolts that hold the case together and pried it apart. Compared to some of the videos I've watched, mine came apart pretty darn easy

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There's a good bit more bearing wear on the front diff than there was on the rear. Not sure why that is

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