I'm rebuilding the differential in my 1980 Spitfire; definitely a first for me.
All of the gears look good, and I have bought all new bearings, seals, and
thrust washers. So far, I have the planet and sun gears mounted in the carrier
with good movement and no backlash. Next task is setting up the pinion, and my
problem is that the shop manual I have is for the older shim diff, but I have
the one with the crush washer. The manual and some other sources talk about
doing a preliminary setup of the pinion (or a dummy pinion) with bearings in
place to measure the pinion depth with a tool that incorporates a dial gauge on
a special mount.
My first question is, do I really need to do that? I don't have a dummy
pinion, and if I use the actual pinion it would mean mounting and then later
removing the bearings, something one source says is likely to bugger the
bearings (which I did to one of the old ones during removal). During
disassembly I recorded the number of turns it took to remove the pinion nut.
Could I just set up the pinion with new bearings and crush washer and the
original spacers and then tighten the nut to (nearly) the number of turns I
counted earler and then use my new inch/lb torque wrench to get the reading
specified in the manual? In other words, can I set the pinion preload and
count on the depth being right?
If I can't get away with that, is there some way to set up my dial gauge to
measure the pinion depth without buying a new tool that I may never use again?
Seems like it should be possible.
Thanks for any advice you can give.
Tim Gaines
Clinton, SC
** triumphs@autox.team.net **
Archive: http://www.team.net/archive
|