Bad Pinion Bearings, gears still OK?

[LNielson]

My Dana 60 front axle has bad pinion bearings. You can move the pinion in/out 1/8"+ my truck has been a 2 wheel drive for too long.

There are no broken teeth or obvious signs of damage to the ring/pinion teeth. I'm concerned there still might be weird wear going on. I don't really want to use my brand new bearings just to set it up and see how jacked the contact pattern/wear marks look.

How can or should I verify that my gears are OK before just rebuilding it and hoping for the best?

If I need to replace the gears I'll probably go to a 4.56 or 4.88 (currently 4.10's) but if I don't need to change them, I'll spend the $ for another upgrade.

 

[454Sub]

The pinion is possibly ok. You would have to pull it and see. It shouldn't be hard to remove it, minus the nut part.

And depending on tire size that's a good excuse anyways to gear it.

 

[nvrenuf]

Post up pics of the pattern on both the ring and pinion.

IMO, if it's marginal I'd probably fix it (unless you're looking for an excuse to research). Typically, the front end sees so much less use than the rear plus it's all low speed that even with a bad pattern (vs true damage) they'll be ok.

 

[LNielson]

Thanks for the responses. I'll drop the cover and take some pics. Didn't think to when i had it opened up before.

The pinion is possibly ok. You would have to pull it and see. It shouldn't be hard to remove it, minus the nut part.

And depending on tire size that's a good excuse anyways to gear it.

I'm running 37's with an SM465, a little more gear would be an alright thing for sure. 4.88's would put it back to the stock tire/gear ratio.

Post up pics of the pattern on both the ring and pinion.

IMO, if it's marginal I'd probably fix it (unless you're looking for an excuse to research). Typically, the front end sees so much less use than the rear plus it's all low speed that even with a bad pattern (vs true damage) they'll be ok.

How would you go about fixing weird wear on the gears? Just reset the contact patch where it belongs and let it wear itself back in?

 

[blazinzuk]

Pics please

 

[nvrenuf]

How would you go about fixing weird wear on the gears? Just reset the contact patch where it belongs and let it wear itself back in?

You can't really fix it, the bad pattern will always be there. You can reset the gears with a correct pattern and let them go but if they were in a rear or an application that would run at speed they'd probably whine or even chew themselves up over time. I was just saying that since it's a front axle that would probably see 5% of the use of a rear axle you can get away with it for a lot longer, probably long enough to buy the gears you want WHEN you want rather than having to bite the bullet unexpectedly.

 

[LNielson]

I get it, thanks, I misread what you wrote.

I appreciate the response.

 

[LNielson]

Pictures:

The carrier isn't chewed up at all, but there are a few places that don't necessarily look to good to me? I'd love to get some input.

 

[obijuank5]

Roll that beautiful bean footage.

They look pretty good.

 

[LNielson]

Thanks for looking Guys,

Here's a couple more i took once the sun wasn't shining right into the diff.

Is that worn looking edge at the toe normal? The polished looking area, not the serrations left from the rough machining?

 

[nvrenuf]

The serrated areas on the inboard end of the teeth is likely machine work. There does look like there might be a little bit of something there but with good bearings and set up the gears shouldn't touch there, only in the middle 90% of the teeth.

 

[Blue85]

The serrated areas on the inboard end of the teeth is likely machine work. There does look like there might be a little bit of something there but with good bearings and set up the gears shouldn't touch there, only in the middle 90% of the teeth.

That's what I'm thinking. Nothing scary there beyond what you get from any used gear setup. Set them up properly now and they should last a long time. The 14B is beef. Now if you're towing heavy all the time or you run truck-pull competitions, you'll want to spend more money...

Then again, you're mostly showing the coast side of the teeth, where the drive side is more important and we haven't seen the pinion gear at all...

 

[blazinzuk]

Here's the thing.

Those will be fine. Nothing looks seriously wrong.

But you will never know how much noise it will add. Could be very little they might whine a touch.

I have had good luck getting used gears with many questions setup and relatively quite, so I would say your fine to go ahead throw new bearings in, check the pattern and go

 

[muddysub]

Here's the thing.

Those will be fine. Nothing looks seriously wrong.

But you will never know how much noise it will add. Could be very little they might whine a touch.

I have had good luck getting used gears with many questions setup and relatively quite, so I would say your fine to go ahead throw new bearings in, check the pattern and go

Agreed, I had the same problem wbut the the front axle in my Toyota. I put a set of bearings and set up the best pattern I could, with @blazinzuk helping via text message. I'm pretty confident in the front diff now, considering what I found and a month later it got my ass off of gold bar rim in FWD after grenading my rear diff. You'll be fine running those gears, just get them set up right.

This is what I found, maybe one quart in the front diff, pinion bearings were toast.




Final pattern, they're performing just fine.