Huck's daily - 2005 Z71 crewcab

[TotalyHucked]

Here's a video I took last night. I'm stretching my arm back to hold the phone over roughly where the bottom of the rear seats are (they're folded down so you can hear more). I'm rolling slow and then accelerate to roughly 20-25mph here and start playing with the throttle, you can hear it come and go.

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[legopnuematic]

I wonder if you ran into a “false positive” sort of situation.

Your early/initial setup(s) did not appear to be wildly off, visually at least.

Looking back at my notes from the 14b sf I did, started at .02, it was decent, went to .03 was clearly deep, went to .025 was still clearly deep, went all the way down to .015, was clearly shallow. I can recall exactly, but think ended up back at .02 as the final setup that provided the best pattern. I’ll dig up the pictures showing that.

Point I’m getting at here is that on that setup within ±.005 of the final setup showed clear shallow and deep patterns, so .01, whereas you have gone way farther than that and it really hasn’t gone clear shallow or deep if that makes sense.

Which is for me where the confusion begins. But what I’m not sure of, is if the relationship between the diameter and tooth counts of the ring and pinion make any significant impact on the “slope” or rate of change. For example does a 3.07 gear sets pattern move “faster” or slower with a .003 change in pinion depth than a 4.88, assuming everything else is good and backlash held as a constant. Or do is there no difference at all or one that’s small enough to be a non factor.

Just more thinking out loud than anything here.

 

[TotalyHucked]

All good points. Maybe 4.88s just move much slower/less with changes because of the thickness of the ring gear. That's probably why I kept chasing and ended up so far away from the "normal" range of pinion shims people tend to see setting these things up, I never had an "oh crap, that's too deep" or "oh crap that's too shallow" moment. It was always just a change, was never really a clear direction of the change. Granted not many people are putting such a deep gear in either. My buddy that does alot of these (usually 3.55-4.10) says 20s/30s is typically where he lands for the pinion shim. He's 2hrs away and his business is insanely busy right now or I would've already had him come help me.

My coworker was pretty adamant that he doesn't feel it's awful and to keep driving it and see what happens. He's done a handful of 10-bolts and several Mopar 8 3/4 or 8 1/4s over the years. I'm not sure I have a good feeling about doing that, so I think I'm gonna go back to that .029 setup (especially now that I know better about thinning the compound down and spinning it with a drill) and try again from there. I think I'd eventually adjusted to a .026 PS when I drove it the first time. Like I said when I drove that setup, it had a very light rotational sound that I now think was probably just the tight section of the ring gear, that I have now flipped 180*

 

[legopnuematic]

Here is the 14b SF for reference-

Very distinct movements. Motive gear set, 3.73 if that is any factor. It’s done about 1000 miles so far including dyno runs, 330hp to the tires iirc. No noise.

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With your two mile test I do not believe any appreciable wear has taken place. People that run a noisy setup for 500+ miles and want to change it, at that point the wear pattern is established and any changes is will very unlikely solve that at that point.

Personally I’m of the mindset that if it makes noise to begin with, it’s not going to magically stop doing that. The only way I’d let it go is if it was a proven, known fact that “X” brand and ratio of gear will be noisy regardless of setup. Even then I’m not sure.

Unfortunately a lot of shops (especially the off road and jeep ones) seem to like to pass off noise as “part of it” or blame it on everything but themselves for not doing a setup correctly. Yet they still seem to gladly take peoples money, to provide subpar results.

Yeah, it stinks and probably feels like you are going in circles, but I think it is for the best to go back to where it was before and go from there.

One other thing to verify, is when you are pressing the pinion bearing on to the pinion, is I like to be sure I’m not accidentally pushing on the cage, I like to give the cage a spin while pressing to be sure of that. I either will make special sleeves sized to that specific bearing, or I keep old bearings and races around as install tools that I cut the cage off the inners to use. I like to be absolutely sure I’m pressing on the inner race and not the cage or anything else.

 

[TotalyHucked]

Wow, yeah I never saw any changes like that. Now, when you're doing that, is that purely a pinion shim change for each different setup/picture? Or is that also after you'd adjusted carrier bearings to bring the backlash into spec?

Each time I made a pinion change, I adjusted the backlash before I ran a pattern

 

[legopnuematic]

Those specific photos were with the backlash corrected with each change. When making the initial change I left the shims the same for the carrier to see where it was, then corrected.

On the 14b SF it uses a screw type adjuster on the driver's side, so only dealing with shims on one side of the carrier.

There was some changes after this, but this is how I was making my movements.

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[TotalyHucked]

That's exactly what I was doing too. That's not fair you have a side adjuster! lol

 

[TotalyHucked]

So I've been working on this...and working on this...and working on this...and working on this...and working on this...and working on this...and working on this...


I've kept Spencer in the loop, he's been awesome to talk through things with and bounce ideas off of since this has been fighting me so hard. I did 4hrs Saturday morning before the C10s in the City pop up meet dissecting what went wrong with the second drive. 7hrs Sunday playing with different setups after lunch. 5 more hours Monday after work doing 3 more setups and then doing the final install to get it back together and drivable one more time. Drove it yesterday evening and it's making a different, bad noise.

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At this point, I've started going back and making comparison pictures with the patterns to try to make some sense of what may be going on. I believe originally, I was too focused on using thinner and thinner pinion shims and I'd gone too far that way to see any serious changes in the pattern. What I've since learned is to start with the factory shim and do a huge swing on either side to make sense of what needs to happen, then dial in it a little at a time from there.

These are the 3 drive side setups that I fully reassembled and drove the truck with. The first .026 setup was the quietest, (though this was very early on, so I only drove it in our parking lot up to ~25mph) it was silent on the lift but had 1 slight noise every rotation of the wheel in the parking lot, that sounded like a tight spot in the ring gear. This also was before I knew to check in at least 4 places on the ring gear for backlash. I later learned that I did have a tight spot and spun the ring gear 180*.

The .012 made a decent amount of noise (the video I posted the other day, drove it up to ~40mph), sounded like harmonics of the teeth and I also discovered I might have hurt the pinion bearing before install. I'd heated it in the toaster oven and put the pinion in the freezer but apparently didn't give it enough time. I had to finish with the press and must've gotten the cage a little cuz after I took it back apart, the cage was awful loose and floppy.

The .036 is what I drove yesterday (with another set of fresh pinion bearings, got up to 50 in the video above), this is what the video above is. Might also have something wrong with the pinion bearings, not sure yet. Won't take it apart until Monday cuz I'm going out of town tomorrow for the weekend.

Knowing what I know now, the .026 is the best of the 3. It's the closest to the "football" shape you want with a 5-cut gear. The .012 is clearly too shallow. The .036 isn't terrible but looks like the pinion is a little deep. The coast side (next pic down) is also softer on the .026.

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Here's some other setups I've tried over the last few days

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[TotalyHucked]

I also think I have an issue with this being a cheap ass Chinese gearset (ironically enough it's branded as USA Standard). I'm going to give it one more go to get the pattern decent (and also order more bearings) but I'm fully expecting to still have noise. If that's the case, I'm going to order a Motive gearset and try again. And if that's the case, I may go back down to a 4.56. Since I've been second guessing everything else, I'm starting to second guess my 4.88 choice. But I will at least get 2 of the 35x11.50s that I've bought mounted and drive this enough to see if I like it or not before making that change.

So I think my plan now is going to be pull it down one more time and play in the .024-.030 pinion shim range and see what happens. Worst case, I'll throw the .026 back in it and drive it to see if it's quiet again cuz I know it was before at least at low speed

And more setups just for illustration sake

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[idahovette]

As much BS as you have gone thru with this gear set, I'm betting on a bad/noisy set of gears. Too many set ups with mostly the same noisy results???

 

[bucket]

As much BS as you have gone thru with this gear set, I'm betting on a bad/noisy set of gears. Too many set ups with mostly the same noisy results???

I agree. It's been within spec so many times and had several good patterns, it should have been quiet.

 

[TotalyHucked]

Honestly that’s how I’m leaning too. I think I may go ahead and order a new R&P in the next couple days to have waiting for when I go back and try in the .026 range and it’s still noisy lol. Already ordered another 2 sets of bearings from QP (one front and one rear)

 

[bluex]

Kudos for sticking with it, an sharing the adventure with all the details. I've learned alot through this. Everytime I think I want to try doing my own gears I'll remember this an probably pay someone lol.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff but it seems to me that you've tried it everywhere you can so it's gotta be the gears. I have heard the cheaper ones will be noisy regardless of setup so

 

[mxer147]

Kudos for sticking with it, an sharing the adventure with all the details. I've learned alot through this. Everytime I think I want to try doing my own gears I'll remember this an probably pay someone lol.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff but it seems to me that you've tried it everywhere you can so it's gotta be the gears. I have heard the cheaper ones will be noisy regardless of setup so

Right, and adding the challenge of not having a lift so you are laying down in the grass, cement or asphalt. Usually, perseverance finally pays off. Way to stay the course amongst the challenges.

 

[TotalyHucked]

I definitely wouldn’t wanna do this on a driveway or in the gravel. *Maybe* if it were a 9” Ford or 8 3/4” Mopar that you can just drop the center chunk. But def not anything else.

If I didn’t REALLY wanna know how to do this, I would’ve already thrown in the towel and taken it somewhere. But this is something I’ve always wanted to learn and I’m bound and determined to do so