hello i have been searching for some advice on installing new pinion bearing on my front dana 60. I cant get the pinion nut to tighten up the bearings enough, still have some slop. i put new bearings, races and cruch sleeves. it just wont all suck together. Am i missing something. any help would be appreciated, thank you.

 

As long as you crushed the sleeve enough you may be fine.

There is supposed to be some rotational "slop" it's called backlash, and if you don't have some your gears would destroy themselves. If you get slop OTHER than rotational, your crush sleeve is probably not fully squashed. BIG cheater, and don't be shy. Big Dana axles take some MUSCLE to crush the crush sleeves.

 

These big Danas don't have crush sleeves, they have shims between the pinion bearings to dictate how much preload they have. Sounds like you have to pull it back apart and remove shims for however many thousandths of endplay you have, plus a few more thousandths for some preload.

 

Oops. So it's probably got a solid spacer.

 

That's what I thought also but my service manual says it has a crush sleeve. Apparently the bean counters strike again. It's called a Collapsible Preload Spacer. Caps are in the SM. Shows a picture of it also.

 

Is it a Chrysler manual? I have the '01 FSM, says nothing of a crush sleeve. Its shims to adjust pinion depth and preload.