A friend of mine decided to do a gear swap and lunchbox locker with our help. Between incorrect parts and problems his jeep has been in our garage for 2 weeks.
Its been about 5 years since I've done gears, and never in danas.
Just working on the rear 44 rite now, still waiting for the correct fronts, we were sent rubis.

Having issues getting shimmed correctly and with binding.

Some things that seem odd to me, wondering if its normal for 44's
The carrier and shims (using factory shims) are really easy to put in the housing, not tight like I'm used to.
You have to tighten the bearing caps all the way to test, it moves the carrier significantly (guessing because its so loose)
If I shim the pinion to get the contact in the middle of the tooth it causes the gears to bind. The olny way to keep them spinning correctly is to have the contact toward the top of the tooth.

I've been getting conflicting info on where to add carrier shims, inside or outside the bearing?

Thoughts? Advise?

Thanks

 

Jackie,

I used to do quite a few Dana's. The older models all used shims placed under the carrier bearings. The Jk and newer series D44's use shims on the outside of the bearings like a Ford or GM corporate rear. Normally on the older D44's there is a significant amount of preload on the carrier. You would need to pry it out upon disassembly & tap it in firmly on setup. Some aftermarket carriers require a bit of adjustment. Once you get the pinion depth & bearing preload correct then you can get a more accurate idea. Remember if you need to adjust backlash replace the shims from one side of the carrier to the other so your preload will remain the same. I hope this helps you some. Most Dana's set up pretty nicely.

 

You might find something useful in these. They are both by the same person, so there is probably some overlap of info.

https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/jk-w...gearing-82262/
https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/modi.../begins-78112/

 

X2 Excellent source for re-gearing a JK.

PS - Don't forget to break them in right!