Huck's daily - 2005 Z71 crewcab

[Ricko1966]

Switch to crush sleeve eliminators,make your life easy and they are reusable.

 

[TotalyHucked]

Then here's the drive side

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Pre-change/teardown on the left, new setup on the right

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[TotalyHucked]

So I'm thinking either run it, or maybe put .001 back in the pinion or so.

 

[TotalyHucked]

Decided not to make any more changes on the rear just yet. The carrier shims stayed the same, the pinion shim went from .029 down to .026 (OE was .036). Gonna call QP tomorrow morning first thing and get another set of bearings coming (probably order 2 so I have them for the front).

Any thoughts on what you see @legopnuematic ? I don’t think I wanna take any more shim out of the pinion, I think it will pull the pinion too far away. But the runout on the gear is certainly not ideal. That tells me that with the previous setup, I had a section of the ring gear that was too tight as far as backlash. That may have been the sound I heard. Now I have a small section that’s too loose. I feel like that’s better than too tight. If I add a smidge more shim back in, it’ll tighten up the backlash a tad but also sharpen up the contact patch down toward the root again.

Also got the front diff back down today. Had some glitter in the oil, slightly larger than normal glitter but no real chunks.

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Pulled the vent plug and decided to run a pattern. Painted 3 sections, roughly the same distance apart

Drive side

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Coast side

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[TotalyHucked]

Drive side #2

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Coast side #2

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Drive side #3

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Coast side #3

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Not real sure what to think of these patterns, not sure if I should also be aiming for an oval or if that’s not how this one works. My book only covers 10/12 bolts. But it spins really nice.

It’s actually quite a bit looser than when I installed it. If you’ll recall, I made mention that after putting the whole assembly back together, it got really tight. Now it’s nice and easy to spin. Haven’t checked pinion drag yet but it’ll free spin a bit now.

Backlash also opened up a good bit. Before I was ~.017-.019 (.0085-.0095) but now I’m at ~.021-.022 (.0105-.011), so that’s a bit loose.

 

[legopnuematic]

I say first do some checking to attempt to find out where the runout is coming from. 0.004 variation is fairly significant.

Set your indicator up to check the rear face of the ring gear, the OD of the ring gear, and on the back of the flange where the ring gear bolts are (if possible). If you have access to one, a test indicator or a dial indicator is my preference over a digital travel indicator.

The runout could be from the carrier not being machined perpendicular to the axis of rotation, or possibly not concentric. It seems pretty common for spools to not be perpendicular, certainly possible on an open/limited slip carrier though. The ring gear itself could be introducing it form the milling/hobbing process. Or there are burrs on the ring gear or carrier that is keeping things from sitting flat.

If you check as mentioned above that will provide some clues to where it is coming from. Depending on the cause there are different solutions. If the carrier is the issue, not much can be done outside of having it set up in a lathe and carefully trued up with a skim cut, which if done improperly makes bad go to worse. If the ring and the carrier both have runout, the ring gear can be indexed 180 degrees (or some other amount) and rechecked to see if the errors cancel themselves out. If burrs are present, then simply deburr and reassemble.

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[TotalyHucked]

Switch to crush sleeve eliminators,make your life easy and they are reusable.

Yeah I think I'm gonna try that next time. I've heard some arguments against them, figure I'll give them a try and see for myself

 

[TotalyHucked]

I say first do some checking to attempt to find out where the runout is coming from. 0.004 variation is fairly significant.

Set your indicator up to check the rear face of the ring gear, the OD of the ring gear, and on the back of the flange where the ring gear bolts are (if possible). If you have access to one, a test indicator or a dial indicator is my preference over a digital travel indicator.

The runout could be from the carrier not being machined perpendicular to the axis of rotation, or possibly not concentric. It seems pretty common for spools to not be perpendicular, certainly possible on an open/limited slip carrier though. The ring gear itself could be introducing it form the milling/hobbing process. Or there are burrs on the ring gear or carrier that is keeping things from sitting flat.

If you check as mentioned above that will provide some clues to where it is coming from. Depending on the cause there are different solutions. If the carrier is the issue, not much can be done outside of having it set up in a lathe and carefully trued up with a skim cut, which if done improperly makes bad go to worse. If the ring and the carrier both have runout, the ring gear can be indexed 180 degrees (or some other amount) and rechecked to see if the errors cancel themselves out. If burrs are present, then simply deburr and reassemble.

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My coworker has a real dial indicator, I was planning use that for checking the runout. I hadn't thought about spinning the gear 180* (or whatever amount) to see if it cancels out. I'll definitely try that depending on what I find the source of the runout to be. Hopefully I'll have a chance today but if not I definitely will tomorrow.

I have seen people talk about these cheaper US Standard gearsets as well as Yukon having some runout in the gear themselves. Hopefully if nothing else, I can flip the gear 180* and get it to at least vary within the .006-.010 spec.

 

[TotalyHucked]

I say first do some checking to attempt to find out where the runout is coming from. 0.004 variation is fairly significant.

Set your indicator up to check the rear face of the ring gear, the OD of the ring gear, and on the back of the flange where the ring gear bolts are (if possible). If you have access to one, a test indicator or a dial indicator is my preference over a digital travel indicator.

The runout could be from the carrier not being machined perpendicular to the axis of rotation, or possibly not concentric. It seems pretty common for spools to not be perpendicular, certainly possible on an open/limited slip carrier though. The ring gear itself could be introducing it form the milling/hobbing process. Or there are burrs on the ring gear or carrier that is keeping things from sitting flat.

If you check as mentioned above that will provide some clues to where it is coming from. Depending on the cause there are different solutions. If the carrier is the issue, not much can be done outside of having it set up in a lathe and carefully trued up with a skim cut, which if done improperly makes bad go to worse. If the ring and the carrier both have runout, the ring gear can be indexed 180 degrees (or some other amount) and rechecked to see if the errors cancel themselves out. If burrs are present, then simply deburr and reassemble.

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So I was unable to check runout on the carrier flange, just not enough room for the plunger. But I did check the backside and side of the ring gear, there was no runout on the rear face, there was less than .001 on the side of the gear where your right most arrow is. I also checked just inboard of the base of the teeth and there was no measurable runout there.

A friend of mine also sent me a good video talking about marking compound and how if too thick, it can throw off your backlash readings. So I cleaned all the compound off and checked backlash in a bunch of different spots all around the gear while it was dry. It came down quite a bit, now it varies from .008-.010. Much better than the .007-.011 I did have.

So then I mixed up a much, much thinner compound and ran a pattern in 2 different spots. Also ran it with a drill this time, found my coworker's DeWalt to be strong enough to do it (my Ryobi is not). Did not change any shims, this is still the .029 on the pinion shim and whatever I already had on the carrier shims.

Drive side

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Coast side

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[legopnuematic]

That’s good that there is minimal runout, seems less common with the open and limited slips, but spools really seem to be bad for being warped or not true. Still easy enough to check and rule out.

It’s hard to say without seeing it in person, looks like your drive side is fairly football/hamburger shaped (soft edges).

Is it in setup bearings in those pictures or final bearings?

 

[TotalyHucked]

Those are just the setup bearings. I think for learning purposes, I'm gonna make another large change to see what happens. Maybe take .005-.010 from the pinion and see what it looks like. At this point I think I should do that just to start learning how to read patterns better.

 

[legopnuematic]

One thing to consider/remember with setup bearings vs final bearings, is that while bearings are made to tight dimensions as as far as diameters and such, the length is typically more open, for example here is Timken spec on a pinion bearing for a 14b SF:

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-.000 +.008 tolerance on the width is, in the world of gears a lot. So even with two “identical” Timken (or whatever brand) can vary enough to throw a good setup off when changing gap from setup to final bearings.

Luckily we can measure this with using an old race and a dial indicator and a flat surface. Set bearing on flat surface, set race on bearing, zero indicator on the face of the race, check 4 places, switch to other bearing, same race, check in 4 places and compare to first bearing. There is your delta, then you can anticipate a potential variance and account for that ahead of time.

For me, taking time and playing with shim combinations and running patterns on the 14b sf I did really helped me, I’d still consider myself to be on the green side on pattern reading, especially since there is a lot of interpretation and opinion on what is a good, bad, acceptable, or not pattern. Going purposefully too shallow, then too deep helped me see what those actually look like and what making changes did to the pattern.

So, yes it is more time and effort to play with shim combinations and running patterns, but also it’s a learning process, there is no free lunch. If you’re serious about doing driveline stuff (engine, trans, transfer case, differential) it’s a (in my opinion) a situation where lucky isn’t better than good.

In my book, a failure isn’t a failure if you learn from it, and learn how to correct it and make it better, etc. You have to remember you’re doing something (setting gears up) that most “hotrodders” haven’t done, and may never do. It is specialty work and really a craft in of itself.

 

[legopnuematic]

On a side note, have you pulled back the cluster and seen if there is a sticker with a name on the cluster?

 

[TotalyHucked]

One thing to consider/remember with setup bearings vs final bearings, is that while bearings are made to tight dimensions as as far as diameters and such, the length is typically more open, for example here is Timken spec on a pinion bearing for a 14b SF:

You must be registered for see images attach

-.000 +.008 tolerance on the width is, in the world of gears a lot. So even with two “identical” Timken (or whatever brand) can vary enough to throw a good setup off when changing gap from setup to final bearings.

Luckily we can measure this with using an old race and a dial indicator and a flat surface. Set bearing on flat surface, set race on bearing, zero indicator on the face of the race, check 4 places, switch to other bearing, same race, check in 4 places and compare to first bearing. There is your delta, then you can anticipate a potential variance and account for that ahead of time.

For me, taking time and playing with shim combinations and running patterns on the 14b sf I did really helped me, I’d still consider myself to be on the green side on pattern reading, especially since there is a lot of interpretation and opinion on what is a good, bad, acceptable, or not pattern. Going purposefully too shallow, then too deep helped me see what those actually look like and what making changes did to the pattern.

So, yes it is more time and effort to play with shim combinations and running patterns, but also it’s a learning process, there is no free lunch. If you’re serious about doing driveline stuff (engine, trans, transfer case, differential) it’s a (in my opinion) a situation where lucky isn’t better than good.

In my book, a failure isn’t a failure if you learn from it, and learn how to correct it and make it better, etc. You have to remember you’re doing something (setting gears up) that most “hotrodders” haven’t done, and may never do. It is specialty work and really a craft in of itself.

Yeah, I have kept that in mind about the bearings. I got lucky with the first set of pinion bearings, they were identical to my setup Koyo's. I'll check the next set too to be sure.

I figure I'm already at nearly a month this thing has been down, what's a couple or few more hours to educate myself and better understand what the changes will do. One thing I've been trying very hard not to do is get frustrated and either give up and tow it somewhere or try to rush things. I already rushed when I took everything apart and I'm paying for it now, trying to be very methodical from here forward. It is most definitely a craft.

 

[TotalyHucked]

On a side note, have you pulled back the cluster and seen if there is a sticker with a name on the cluster?

It's Steve. I'm not calling my truck Steve.