Ford 9 inch diff gear setup question.

I pulled the carrier out of my diff to clean it up and free it up after it took a bath in the salt water from the hurricane. It was stuck, but now it seems to spin okay without any roughness by some miracle, so I want to stick it back in and see how it does. I was told years ago you could set the lash with a piece of notebook paper. I didnt remove the pinion gear or crush sleeve, just the carrier. If I planned to run this one long term I would go ahead with new bearings and all but I'm hoping find a center with posi (28 spline 3.25) anyway, so for now this one will have to do.

Can anyone offer any tips for setting the lash?
Thanks, Mike

 

Take some WHITE lube and put a small amount on the ring gear where your pinion teeth make contact. now rotate the pinion gear(by hand) slowly till you see the pattern of the teeth on the ring gear. The pattern of the teeth mesh should be a full mark from one side of the ring gear tooth to the other. Its really hard to explain it by typing it. But that should get you by for a temp. amount of time. I think I would take a serious look at those bearings though.

 

I would look at the bearings too and when you set it up make sure your tooth contact is good like ThingyM suggests but ALSO make sure you have the correct backlash. I usually run .007-.010 in my 9 inch and 8 inch Fords.

 

I suggest you adjust it like the manual says

http://www.selectric.org/manuals/rearend/indexford.html

and you'll see that you don't even need to measure the backlash....although it would be nice to stick a dial indicator on it anyways to be sure it's ok.

(for those who don't want to bother with the reading, you set the carrier so the ring gear just contacts the pinion, then adjust the other side a couple notches tighter to set the preload, and it moves the gears apart enough to give the required backlash)