<font color="green"> OK, in my experience 250 lb-ft of torque won't even start to crush the sleeve, you would get it torqued down and it would still be all sloppy in there.
There's two ways you can look at this. First, I am no expert, but I have done my research and have some hands on experience. The people here on the board seem to back me up on the info I gave earlier. The other guy *might* be an expert, hard to say since I don't know his whole story. I have my own opinions on the knowledge level that most pro mechanics seem to have, but that is for another thread...
I can tell you that just torqueing the pinion nut down seems very wrong and is not even close to the procedure that is given in any of the instructions that I have from Drivetrain Direct, Randy's or any other axle parts house. I would use the procedure that I described above.
If you are going to put in a new crush sleeve, which is probably unneccessary IMHO, since I doubt you overcrushed the old one, then you need to first crush it with an insane amount of torque, generally over 300ft-lbs. Until it is crushed down to the point where the bearings can seat on the races, there will be slop in the pinion itself. ONce you get it crushed far enough that there is no slop, you need to start checking the bearing preload with the torque wrench. 6-8 in-lbs is not much, so you're going to end up really splitting some hairs to get it in that range. If there is not enough preload, tighten the nut a smidge more. If it's too tight, then you need to start over with a new crush sleeve.
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