Made alot of good prgress today. Started by making set up pinion bearings. I removed the old inner pinion bearing with a bearing seperator. I took my dremel tool with a griding stone and ground the inside of both the inner and outer pinion bearing until they could be install and removed by hand. This way i could change the shim that sets my pinion depth without pressing the new bearing on or off.
I moved on to removing the pinion bearing races from the housing, using a punch and hammer. Installed the new races using the old race and a block of wood, driving them home with a 2lb hammer (BFH).
I removed the old carrier bearings by first cutting the cage annd removing it and the rollers to expose the "collar" part fo the bearing. Those were removed easily by heating them with my propane torch, and using a two jaw puller. Installed the new ones using one of the "collars" to drive it on with a wood block and BFH.
I removed the old ring gear by backing all the bolts out halfway and hitting the bolt heads with the BFH, came off without a fuss. The new ring was set onto the carrier, and with some heat and persuasion from the BFH went on. Loctite all the bolts and torqued them to 60 ft.lbs per my motive gear instructions.
Cleaned eveything, took my new pinion gear and set on a new shim of the same thickness as came from the factory (in my case .030"). Slid the set-up inner pinion bearing into place, put the pinion into the housing, outer pin bearing in, companion flang, and nut, tightened to maybe 50ft.lbs. Enough to get an accurate pinion depth.
I moved onto installing the carrier with the new ring gear on it. I tried using the stock shims first. Installed carrier and caps, torqued to 70 ft.lbs (middle of the road between yukon's 60ft.lb and motive's 80ft.lb figure). Marked three teeth on the ring gear with compound, in two spots and ran a pattern.
This is the only pic i got from today, really shoulda taken pictures and done a real write up. This set has :
.030" pinion shim
.276" NRGS shim
.276" RGS shim
.000 backlash
Pattern looks so-so to me. the pinion depth looks pretty good, centered on the face of the tooth. The pattern does fall on the "heel" of the ring gear, but from what I've read this is acceptable. However, the stock shims produced ZERO backlash. Yukon gear recomends .003-.006" backlash for new bearings.
So, out comes the carrier again. I broke out my new shims from my master install kit. Per Yukon's instructions, changing the carrier shims (adding from one side, subtracting from the other) by .010" results in +/-.007" backlash. I added 10 thous to the side away from the ring gear (NRGS), and subtracted 10 thous from the ring gear side (RGS). so, my specs were:
.030" pinion shim
.286" NRGS
.266" RGS
.002" backlash
Reinstalled and torqued, backlash measured .001" under yukons recommened minimum. I decided to change shims again and get myself into specs. Added
.004" NRGS, kept RGS the same, as i didn't have much carrier preload before. Ran a pattern, measured backlash .006"
I'll snap a pic of my current pattern tomorrow. How do you guys feel about my pattern? Is there strong demand for a full write up?
Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and Register
for our forum. Even if you don't want to post, you can still 'Like' and react to posts. 
. I found a shim under the inner pinion bearing on the old gear set, none under the carrier bearings. There are two "spacers" outside the carrier bearings measuring 0.260" RGS and 0.280" NRGS. The pinion shim was .018". This was out of a ranger 8.8 with stripped spiders, I'm salvaging the inner pinion bearing to make a set-up bearing for shim changes, and the 3.73 gears. 
