Dana 35c Overhaul questions

In my case it was a shim and 'I don't need no damn torque wrench on the big nut' issue. My Dana 44 doesn't have crush sleeves.

anyhoo, i bet the OP has got the idea by now, I am of to a big Custom Street Rod show up north.

Mike

Steve G wrote:

Gotta go your direction here, Bill, but have always first tried the fit with the original shims +- the correction for the pinion marking. AIR, something like 3 out of 4 were right that way - but that 1-in-4 could vary from real close to WTF? I always treated that as a starting point, especially if a single bearing set was changed (pinion or carrier - yeah, I did change only the bad one when bucks were tight). That said, I rarely found the original shims even in the ball park if both bearing sets were changed at once.

I still have what's left of a fairly large tube of prussian blue and a

1955 version of the Motors Manual that has a GOOD set of pictures showing all sorts of contact patterns for both good and bad drive and coast side patterns. I once had an old German cabinet maker for a shop teacher and I will never forget what he used to say:

"Der's two vays to do 't> Steve, just like no two differential housings are alike, so be every

In other news, Hell froze over today...

;=)

One final question for now.

When torqueing down the pinion nut to get the proper amount of preload, how often do you stop torqueing and check with the inchpound wrench? One instruction I saw, may have been for a different axle, said torque to minimum torque spec (about 170 ft. lbs) and then check every five (maybe it said ten, can't remember) foot pounds with inchpound wrench until reaching proper preload. That might require stopping and starting from 20 to 40 times or more before crushing the sleeve and reaching the proper preload.

Using this technique, I guess a torque wrench could be helpful when working in the 300 to 400 ft lb range.

How do you guys do it???

Thanks again for all the good info. Troy