I'm wrenching on my F100 trying to get it back on the road before The Invasion on August 30. The first order of business is to change a very leaky pinion seal. I've never done any rear end work so I did a lot of reading/video watching online. I know it's kind of the cheater's way of doing things, but the plan was to mark everything and count threads so I don't mess up the crush sleeve. Got that done and here's where things went south: I put a socket and breaker bar on the pinion nut and got ready for battle only to discover the nut was loose- like just a tad more than finger tight loose. Surely this can't be right? Assuming it isn't, now how do I go about knowing how tight to make the nut upon reassembly? I don't have an inch/lbs beam torque wrench and don't really know the procedure anyway. Anyone got any tips? If it matters, the 9 inch is out of a '68-'74 e200 van, 28 spline, 3:50 open carrier. The truck won't see all that many miles and I've been thinking about a gear and spline change anyway, but that wasn't really in the immediate plan. Thanks in advance for the help.
If the pinion nut was loose, it may be an indication that you have a bad pinion bearing or 2 in there, hence the leaking seal. If you checked before you movd the nut, there was probably a little up/down side/side play in the yoke. I would pull the complete pinion carrier (the 5 bolts that are around the seal area) and have someone that knows how to rebuild one of these pull it apart and inspect the bearings. If they are OK, put in a new crush sleeve and seal and set the preload correctly. I have seen way too many people attempt to short cut this and either leave it too loose or get it too tight... either way the bearings and possibly the ring and pinion will be damaged.
It wants to have just a little bit of drag on the pinion bearings when the nut is really really tight. Usually when the nut is loose, that means the ends of the crush sleeve have worn down some. When you tighten the nut really tight (as it's supposed to be), then the bearings will have too much drag on them, and run hot. If you get something like this http://www.summitracing.com/parts/rmg-04-0011-s then you can adjust the shims to get the preload right. The ford 9" rear is neat, you can take out 5 bolts and remove the pinion support, and work on the bearings, then put it all back in. You shouldn't have to take the whole rearend apart.
Greybeard is steering you right. If you put more preload on rough bearings it will speed up the rate at which they disintegrate.
Thanks for the replys guys. I did check for any play in the yoke before I did anything and I didn't have any play.
Squirrel: I have to replace the seal on my F100 9-inch because it leaks. Can I use the pinion spacer and shims instead of the crush sleeve? How does it work? Thanks.
The shim set replaces the crush sleeve. You have to assemble it all and uset the correct number of shims to get the bearing preload right, which usually takes some trial and error.
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