What's new
CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.

2006 Chevy Silverado diff problem

W

wlbenner

Registered Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2018
Posts
12
Reaction score
0
Location
Amberg, WI
I changed my axel seal and my pinion seal on my rear differential 2006 chev Silverado. Everything seamed to work fine until I put my pinion yoke and driveshaft back on. Now I can't turn my ring gear by hand and I can turn my wheels but the ring gear doesn't turn and I hear a clicking noise as they turn. What to do now?
 
You overtightened the pinion nut.
Get a new crush sleeve and try again.
 
Here is one for a pinion seal.

 
 
This site is so awsawes. Well worth the money and so are all of you that are so willing to help me out with this. I appreciate the vids, but the point I am at, needing to replace my crush washer. Since Desert Storm I have bad memory problems. I had used a vernier caliper to measure how far the nut was on the pinion yoke and a center punch to mark the pinion, the nut and pinion yoke. It sounds like I tightened the nut too much cause I thought I knew the measurement and wrote it down an hour later. I must have been wrong and now aI need a video to replace the crush washer and set the pinion yoke nut right this time. Can anyone help with that.
 
wlbenner said:
I had used a vernier caliper to measure how far the nut was on the pinion yoke and a center punch to mark the pinion, the nut and pinion yoke. It sounds like I tightened the nut too much cause I thought I knew the measurement and wrote it down an hour later. I must have been wrong and now aI need a video to replace the crush washer and set the pinion yoke nut right this time. Can anyone help with that.
Click to expand...

You really can't do that based on distance, unless _MAYBE_ if you can measure the distance to the nearest thousandth. It really needs to be done based on torque, by measuring the torque needed to spin the pinion. This needs to be done regardless if you're running a crush sleeve or solid spacer. A very small movement of the pinion nut will cause a significant change in the preload on the bearings.
 
Can anyone tell me of an alternanate method of setting bearing preload on my 2006 chevy Silverado 8.5" 10 bolt g-80 gov loc. Everything I find is with a dial inch pound torque wrench. I'm using old bearings.
 
Everything you're finding is the only proper way of doing it. Anything else is pretty much a guess on proper preload.
 
It should be snug and you roll it with your hand and it should immediately stop spinning. However it should be easy to rotate. Bearings should be oiled and not scratchy or rough to turn. Very fine line.
This is often one of those things I get to fix for people who tried it themselves. Pretty common to over do it and smoke the bearings or under tightening them and you're back to loose bearings.
Good luck.
 
Would it work if i used a click inch pound torque wrench to checkthe torque when the pinion yoke starts turning???
 
Might work. I'd set it low on spec and try it out. Its rotational drag though. Never used a click type for that.
 
I know it's rotatioal force and that's what bugs me. I can't find a dial torque wrench in the area. Only a beam inch pound torque wrench. I have a click type one. First time doing this. I plan on making real small moves with a large breaker bar or torque wrench until I get the slop out but not sure at what point I need to switch over to inch pounds and do I need to use the breaker once i start using inch pound or will it tighten with onch pound because it already started crushing. Don't think it would.
 
You can use a $2 fish scale available almost anywhere. Don’t know the spec you’re looking for but if you connect it to you wrench one inch from the center of the pinion and pull on the scale and it reads 14 lbs then that’ll be 14 in/lb. or if you connect it 6 inches from the center of the pinion and pull on it and it reads 2 lbs then you’ve got 12 in/lbs. In other words you multiply the distance from the center by the reading on the scale and you’ll get the force it takes to turn the pinion - it’s the exact same thing the dial indicator does.
 
rampage said:
You can use a $2 fish scale available almost anywhere.
Click to expand...

One of those face palm moments for me, lol. That's the same method I use for checking rotational torque on steering knuckles when setting up kingpin style front axles. Just didn't occur to me to use it for setting up gears as I already have the dial indicator torque wrench for those duties. But rampage is correct, and it would work just fine.
 
wlbenner said:
I changed my axel seal and my pinion seal on my rear differential 2006 chev Silverado. Everything seamed to work fine until I put my pinion yoke and driveshaft back on. Now I can't turn my ring gear by hand and I can turn my wheels but the ring gear doesn't turn and I hear a clicking noise as they turn. What to do now?
Click to expand...
If both wheels turn and the ring gear isn't turning either the differential is trashed or the spider gears are missing. You did put the cross-shaft back in, right? If you turn one wheel and the other goes the opposite direction, that's normal. The clicking could be the governor turning - I can't remember if it makes any noise or not - or it could be in the clutch packs. If you didn't put the bolt back in the cross shaft it could be wedged against something preventing the the ring gear (and carrier) from turning.

You haven't driven on it, right?

Working on a differential is a slippery slope. The difficulty with setting pinion preload is that the spec only applies when when there is no ring gear, meaning you have to take the axleshafts back out and pull the whole carrier (taking careful note of the position of each shim). Then you need to make sure the backlash is still OK and really the whole pattern. If something isn't right you're doing a whole gear setup. On a high-mile diff it's sometimes best to just get the crush sleeve back exactly how it came out and not worry about how the parameters have changed with wear (unless something is obviously wrong). Some people have good luck re-using the crush sleeve by controlling the pinion nut torque carefully (so as to not further crush the sleeve) and stake the pinion nut in place when done. Or the crush-sleeve eliminator could be used for that. Ideally you would have measured backlash before you took it apart, but it's probably too late for that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest Posts

Top Bottom