I put the rebuilt diff onto the car, and got the axle to spin, yay! Then I put it into reverse and the driveshaft spun, but the axle did not. I then killed the engine put on a spare rear hub with a 2x4 attached to it and turned over the engine in low. Engine ran fine with the wheel locked, and the driveshaft was spinning. Neither axle rotated, in fact. Sooo, thinking I made the bonehead move of forgetting the key on the pinion, I pulled it off again. Key is fine. It looks like under load the ring gear does not engage. When I spin one axle shaft, the other rotates in the opposite direction. The diff was a bit tight to turn the driveshaft by hand, so I trimmed down a thrust bearing. It it still stiff, but I thought it would be OK. Do I just have to trim the bearing some more, or is something the matter with the whole thing? Neither the axle book nor the service manual address this issue.
cheers,
chriso
You must have skipped a paragraph.The shop manual will fix it,just read and do.
So the rear end was together and you took it apart again to check the pinion key? How could the ring gear not engage? I have trouble imagining how that could happen if all the parts are in place. Maybe some good pictures would help us see what's going on.
Steve the ring gear engaiged it just doesnt rotate rhe axles with any force. Something in the diff is messed up. Power isn't being transferred from the ring to the rest of the assembly except by friction. Maybe i put somethibg together backwards. It'll be sunday before i can tear into it more
I wonder if I dropped one of the keys to the axle/spider when I had the diff apart. That would half explain the issue.
Did you remember to install the universal joint?
Norm
Are both keys in the rear hubs?
Norm
Norm: yes, I even swaged the pin. The driveshaft spins, and is engaged with the ring gear.
The hubs, no as I don't have the wheels on yet. I placed a hub with the key in it to hold one axle. When I did that the other side stopped too. Somehow the power is not going from the ring gear/inner case to the spider gear set. I had it apart to put in the fiber washer between the axles, but I didn't take those gears off. Perhaps the key fell out then. The odd thing is, when I turn one axle, the other one spins in the opposite direction as expected, but the ring gear does not turn. The ring gear rotation is tight, I'll be trimming the bronze thrust bearing down some more anyway.
Did you remember to put in the spider and spider gears?
Yes, he did. The spider and gears have to be in there for one axle to turn the other in the opposite direction. The idea of a key falling out of an axle gear seems very unlikely to me. I'll be interested to see what you find when you get in there. We will want to see pictures.
I'll post pics of the dissection. Sun or Mon. Well, Tonight if I feel up to it... Getting tired of this rear end. A poor workman blames his tools. A rich workman can afford good tools.
Did you remember to put the ring gear bolts in?
Jerry, ja I used a single safety wire around the whole thing. If I have to do that again I'll use the single piece between 2 bolts as discussed last week.
What you are describing can not happen if all gears are in place. Study how the differential works. Stop both axels some way and then put the trans in high and crank. If you can not crank it and turn the drive shaft I would say it will work. If not in the car , do the same thing and turn the driveshaft with a wrench or something. I think you might be wasting your time tearing things apart. The only way this could happen is if you are missing the pinion gear key, the bolts for the ring gear or the keys in the axel shaft gears.
Jim, I know. I did all these things. Something is not connected. I'm trying to figure out what. The less I have to tear into it the better. I'm a firm believer in not taking things apart that don't need to be. I'll have to pull the entire thing down to find this, I think. I was hoping that someone would say "oh yeah that happened to me it is X"
You can look thru the oil plug to see if the ring gear rotates. Fix one axle on one side, rotate the other and the ring gear will rotate. If that is the case, you know the diff is working and the ring gear is rotating. However if you can do this with the engine in gear, there is a disconnect between the ring gear and the engine.
No other way than to pull the rear axle.
My guess is pinion gear key is missing.
"The spider and gears have to be in there for one axle to turn the other in the opposite direction."
Thanks Steve, I think Chris posted that while I was typing.
This might seem like a stupid question, but are you sure the ring gear is not reversed on the carrier so that the teeth are not in mesh with the pinion gear? I don't know if it is possible to mount it backward on the carrier, but if it were, that would account for the drive shaft spinning but the axles not spinning.
Norm
It will mount backwards. Don't ask how I know!