rear gear wear pattern

[silvermonte]

Hello im rebuilding a 10 bolt in my chevelle, im putting a posi and 4.11 gears in my 8.2 rear end. The gears are from richmond and the posi in a yukon if that matters. Ive been messing with pinion depth and backlash forever and this is the best ive managed to get, what am i doing wrong?

[silvermonte]

as an update i think i had the pinion gear down to low, that or i was making the nut on the other end to tight when setting the pre-load, this is how it is now and i think im calling it good unless someone sees something very wrong

[WSSix]

Randy's Ring and Pinion has a great instruction manual for doing this. I found it years ago and have used it a couple times with good success.

It's here if you want to double check your work.
https://www.randysworldwide.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/YukonKitInstallManual_Complete.pdf

I'm torn. I look at the pattern and think you might have the pinion a touch too low. But, it also looks like it might be good.

I prefer to look at the teeth that the marking compound was transferred to versus where it was removed from. I'm looking at your drive side, so the top of the picture, and it appears you're just a touch away from having the pinion up high enough. It looks like the compound is getting cut off by the heel of the ring gear.

If you haven't tried creating a pattern with the pinion up higher than you have it now, I would. As much of a paint as this whole process is, I prefer to take my time while it's all apart.

My only other advice is to be clean with the marking compound when you apply it. Do your best to make sure it's only on the faces of the ring gear and not all over the toe. For me, this has always helped make clean markings and identify when compound has marked where it definitely shouldn't be.

Good luck.

[silvermonte]

So on the final assembly I did raise it up the pinion gear .01" and the gear pattern seemed to be a hair more centered. I dont have any experience at this so Im going to run it and see what happens. I prolly had it apart 13 or 14 times getting everything set that way the instructions says. Time will tell if I did it correctly, either way it was a good learning experience and I would do it again just to save the money that the shops want to charge to do it.

[WSSix]

It's definitely a time consuming task if you're not well versed in it. And you're correct, you can always take it apart and do it again if it's noisy. So long as it spins properly now and everything is tight when you go to drive, the worst it could do is make noise. Good luck, Miles.