Buggered Pinion but a Clean Ring Gear? (1 Viewer)

[atomicshawn]

Where is Tools when I need him? I’ve been away for a while and just read about Kevin... Still can’t get over that.

but anyway, my oem birfs with over 200k miles started clicking a while back. We made plans recently to head south and run some tough trails, so I picked up a new set of birfs and rebuild kit from CO last week. Im a genius so of course I waited till the day before we were to leave to do the repairs.

When I pulled the front diff drain plug I heard something hard hit the pan.

Disappointed a few people and postponed the trip. Tore It all down. Birf soup stalactites and stalagmites in the axle housing (man I forgot what a mess this job is. It’s like a grease bomb went off in my garage). I found the source of the metal chunkage and the subtle drone we’ve been hearing for the past year or so at certain speeds/loads...

4.88 Sierra Gear set purchased from CO a decade ago with over 100k with some very hard miles. I’m not surprised. What’s weird though is the ring gear still looks like new. No damage. Perfect wear pattern. I’m not a physics major or engineer. Curious what this is... Pinion just bears more load? Poured from a different batch?

 

[nukegoat]

Pinions are typically harder than the ring gear since the amount of 'wear' each tooth endures is higher on the pinion (there's less of them). So rings break sometimes, pinions other times. Depends on a lot of stuff, but I wouldn't think much of it. Go get new gears.

 

[atomicshawn]

Pinions are typically harder than the ring gear since the amount of 'wear' each tooth endures is higher on the pinion (there's less of them). So rings break sometimes, pinions other times. Depends on a lot of stuff, but I wouldn't think much of it. Go get new gears.

Ya makes sense.

Done and ready to go back in. Along with the new birfs, axle shafts, bearings, seals, rotors, overhauled drive line...

Doing my part apparently to keep the economy going D:

 

[mano002]

I had a set of Toyota 8" 5.71 gears that did the same thing. I assumed it was just from pinion deflection under load for a small pinion.

 

[cody c]

I’ve wrecked maybe 3 rear pinions, stock 4.11’s, they go first, and the only damage I really took to the ring was from the broken pinion jamming into it.

Actually also the throat broke on the carrier from that too, but ya it is typical that just the pinions spits out teeth.

nice thing about the 60 series is you can take just one spare diff/parts as they are the same front to back, as opposed to the 80’s smaller front.

mine is part time, and have only wrecked rear diffs, maybe things would be better with AWD

 

[nukegoat]

I had a set of Toyota 8" 5.71 gears that did the same thing. I assumed it was just from pinion deflection under load for a small pinion.

Ring gear will deflect a ton more than a pinion.

 

[slow95z]

That's nothing....