Front Diff Damage (Again). How Do You Keep One Of These Together? (1 Viewer)

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akarilo

akarilo

Joined
Jan 19, 2006
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Location
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Nitro 5.29, cryo'd, e-lock, chipped teeth :(. This is the second front failure I've had since regearing. The first incident I can take some/all of the blame. Bound up, steep incline, reverse, poof! I get that. This time I just started hearing this rotational "clunk" a few weeks after a wheeling weekend. I had a well seasoned installer set the gears up both times, so I don't really know what happened this time. I contacted ZUK and plan to have him set this one up. If that doesn't work, I'm at a loss. Any other suggegstions?

4DA7B281-2812-41AA-BDA2-E3797CDDDAA7_zpswd7jlwsf.jpg

781D0833-001A-4760-8C6D-15BB2316BF78_zpsau2atup8.jpg
 
Akarilo: have you talked with Nitro, maybe send them photos of the fracture??
 
I do wheel the truck hard but I wouldn't call it abusive. I never bounce and spin or anything like that. I've noticed on some of ZUK's writeups that he likes to set this particular application a little deeper, and also adds additional preload to the bearings. It's worth a shot before going to anything as extreme as an axple swap. I don't really know if the cryo job did any good or not either. I'll talk it over with ZUK. The idea of a 9.5 up front sounds great but I think Slee tried that a while ago and smoked 2 carriers in one day. Maybe not use the front locker as often?
 
I'm curious about this myself.

When you say they were set up by a "well seasoned installer", how much exp do they have with 80's? Do you have copies of the patterns, and how much preload was set when you got them done before? I'm not questioning their ability so much as I'd like to know what they did for a starting point.

Were they setup with crush sleeves or solids?
 
Well I would think that the 9.5 in the front would be on the coast side which is the weaker side. Who knows if 9.5" on coast is stronger than 8" on the drive side. So going to a 9.5" front diff might not gain you much strength and you lose clearance. If you had to I would do a reverse rotation Ford 9"....

Wasn't there some discussion that the 5.29 was weaker than the other gear sets? I thought I also remember that you have to lightly clearance one of the teeth to get the cross pin in?
 
The toy 9.5 is 1/8" smaller in radius than the gm/dodge dana 60 front that rides on the 'coast side'. Clearance from the hipinion is nearly negligible if youre building a new front as the 'cut and turn' affect rotates it up @ the tcase.

Theres a handful of other reasons the 9.5 is stronger that has nothing to do with ring gear size, rotation direction, etc. The carrier bearings are farther apart, the caps have knobs that touch
the housing edges, the carrier itself is a larger chunk...

The 5.29 being weaker is dismissed if you put the ring gear next to a 4.10 ring gear(the 5.29 is remarkably thicker).
 
I dont disagree scott, but that stuff gets really expensive($5k in diff/rcvs alone i believe?)
 
Yeah but how much is it to replace 3 diffs? and not having faith in your truck? I would have Zuk set it up and give it one more shot but after that what are his other options? I guess he could go Tuff Stuff housing and 9.5" carrier, but would still have the issues with Longfields having issues at 11k and without Bobby around any longer who knows what kind of support or quality we will be getting?
 
That break looks funny. Did the other broke set of gears looks like that? Maybe it's a problem that Nitro had. Looks like the teeth broke in layers, or sheets, like the heat treat process was incorrect. Usually they break in chunks not layers.
 
CruiseOrlando said:
I'm curious about this myself.
When you say they were set up by a "well seasoned installer", how much exp do they have with 80's?
Were they setup with crush sleeves or solids?
Click to expand...

This is kinda my point to the thread. He is very experienced but very little experience with this particular diff. Also, I did use a crush sleeve because I believe ZUK had stated that that would be fine for this application. If a solid spacer offers any improvement it will definately happen this go round. Going to leave the details up to the expert.
 
In all the research and talking to people that I did before picking crush vs solid, I went solid. Yes, it's a royal pain in the ass to get right. But I think it's better overall after taking in all the conflicting opinions.

Basically it seemed to come down to two camps - the ones who said crush sleeves were 'fine', or the ones who said the solid spacer was the way to go, and they seemed to all have all sorts of reasons why. Many claimed experience with issues with the crush sleeves.

So that's why I went solid with mine... and unless I have a problem, it's a great choice, right?!?

It's a little hard to tell from your pics, but it does look like there's a wear pattern on the ring that favors the outside edge of the ring. How's the rest of it look?
 
The solid spacer came with my Nitro setup kit from JT's. I always have had solid spacers in my wheeling diffs. I was tought that the crush sleeve will make the pinion pre load change when wheeling hard. The solid spacer ...well it's solid it can't change. I recently stepped up to nitro 529's and longfields. If this ever happens to my rig I will likely swap in the old axle's so they break first. Easy to change and much cheaper for used axle's. Hope it doesn't come to that but who knows after reading threads like this. To the OP sorry for the bad luck. Big PIA for you to deal with again.
 
OP did you say those gears were cryo'd?
 
akarilo said:
I do wheel the truck hard but I wouldn't call it abusive. I never bounce and spin or anything like that. I've noticed on some of ZUK's writeups that he likes to set this particular application a little deeper, and also adds additional preload to the bearings. It's worth a shot before going to anything as extreme as an axple swap. I don't really know if the cryo job did any good or not either. I'll talk it over with ZUK. The idea of a 9.5 up front sounds great but I think Slee tried that a while ago and smoked 2 carriers in one day. Maybe not use the front locker as often?
Click to expand...

Sent you an email akarilo...sure would like to do an autopsy on it. It might tell a story. ZUK
PS---nice macro shots!
 
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