We got the gears in this weekend. Nate helped me with the final setup. It all went pretty well until it didn't.
I got to make a couple of tools. The first was a yoke puller.
I had all new bearings but we wanted to pull the pinion bearing off to see what shim was under it and to use it for a setup bearing. I ended up making my own separator.
I clamped the 2 pieces of angle together and put a 2-1/8" diameter hole with the center where to 2 angles meet. Welded one of the angles to the "feet" and used the clamps to hold them together. It worked great to pull the old bearing off.
These sanding wheels in a drill worked great to make the setup bearing. Used the 60 grit and found the diameter that was just a little bigger than the bearing.
We had a perfect pattern with the setup bearings, but when we swapped it over to the new bearings it didn't quite transfer. We pulled the new bearing with my homemade separator and it worked like a charm.
It all started downhill when we pressed the new bearing back on with the revised shim. It didn't press on as smoothly as it should have but it went on all the way.
We got an "good" pattern, but we decided to shoot for a "great" pattern. However the bearing that didn't press on smoothly didn't want to come back off and we bent my separator. There's such limited space under the bearing, you can only fit 1/8" thick steel. Plus the new shims had a much larger OD which I think also got in the way.
We stuck with the good pattern and buttoned everything up. I told Nate it was telling us that was the shim it wanted and didn't want to give it up so we should stick with it.
So far it's working right with no noises. If I do gears again, I'm getting one those clam shell bearing pullers to make it easier to pull the pinion bearing off for changing out shims.
The 3.73 gears are SOOO much better than the 3.08s. It just gets down the road like it should. The higher stall converter with the 3.08s felt like I was always starting up a hill or towing something heavy. It couldn't hold OD at 65mph if there was any headwind or small rise in the road.