Why Do I keep busting gears?
JK Enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2011
Posts: 309
Likes: 0
From: Glendale,az
Agree totally with climbbig. Your pinion depth is off. you need to make sure your wear marks are towards the center and oval shaped not moon or to inside edge or outside edge. The pinion crush sleeve took a break bar and huge piece of angle iron using the stock flange bolts and all my leg strength to get 1/4 turns. The pinion needs to be at 10-16 inch lbs of force. And that is measured while your spinning not just force required to start spin. I have a dana 30 front i wheel mostly 3-5 rated trails and no problems. Just leave it unlocked and dont power thru things.
Thread Starter
JK Newbie
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 68
Likes: 0
From: RSA
AFAIK, yes, I gave them a full overhaull kit, every time the re-gear was done.
Couple of things are wrong here. First, the pinion depth is wrong just looking at the wear pattern. Second, the last time i saw an inconsistent pattern, the pinion nut was not torqued down correctly. I recently rebuilt my front pinion and the crush sleeve was an absolute pain to crush. I had to use a 6 foot 3/4 inch breaker bar. Also, strength wise, a 5.13 pinion on a dana 30 is not a strong combo. This wont be your last rebuild on that axle.
Agree totally with climbbig. Your pinion depth is off. you need to make sure your wear marks are towards the center and oval shaped not moon or to inside edge or outside edge. The pinion crush sleeve took a break bar and huge piece of angle iron using the stock flange bolts and all my leg strength to get 1/4 turns. The pinion needs to be at 10-16 inch lbs of force. And that is measured while your spinning not just force required to start spin. I have a dana 30 front i wheel mostly 3-5 rated trails and no problems. Just leave it unlocked and don't power thru things.
Thanks again for every one replying, it is helping me out a lot!.