The Yeti Project

Run 'EE' :

Inner Pinion Shim = .055"
Pinion Preload = 30 in lbs
NRGS Bearing Shim = .116"
RGS Bearing Shim = .118"
Backlash = .006" - .008"

Drive Pattern:



Coast Pattern:

Run 'FF' :

Inner Pinion Shim = .052"
Pinion Preload = 30 in lbs
NRGS Bearing Shim = .126"
RGS Bearing Shim = .142"
Backlash = .005" = .008"

Drive Pattern:



Coast Pattern:




I have changed over to the outer shim variety on both sides, with a little bit of under shim on the RGSB. The slop in dirt, oil and what have you in the old under the bearing shim stacks made up for the difference in total movement of the carrier. I also have the preload in there (a paltry .004" in a D44HD).

This is the likely finishing pinion depth. It is a little hard to tell on the drive side but there is full contact from Heel to Toe with the majority of the pressure on the outer 1/3rd towards the heel. Going by what the Yukon manual says, the importance lies in the centering of the contact from Root to Crown (top to bottom of the tooth). I think that I have done that on this gear set.

Like my last gear set, I could not get the most preferred pattern to realize on the teeth(both sides centered and slightly toe). On this one the coast side of the teeth could be moved from Toe to Heel whilst staying mostly centered on the tooth. They say that the Drive tooth is more important to get right. Unfortunately, I could not get the Drive side to move closer to the Toe by more than 1/2 of the way there: no matter how deep I got the pinion into the housing.

I am looking for something I may have missed. If someone sees something they don't think is right or thinks that a different pattern is better, please say so? The patterns of consequence are 'DD" and 'FF'.

Thanks!

JandDGreens said:

That looks good. At least from what I've seen from other pictures of patterns. I tried to find it but are you changing your gear ratio? And what is it. Thanks I asked a guy who has changed his gears in his Dana 44 to help me (oversee) when I do my axles. So as soon as all this crazyness is over.

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I am going from 3:73 to 4:56.

I'm glad you got someone to manage. I know you can tackle this with just a little bit of help. This D44HD was a cake walk compared to the HP D30. That extra step of shimming the pinion really wears on your arm strength after the second run of a pattern. More or less, just a fair amount more of a pain in the arse than a crush-able sleeve pinion preload spacer. It also seems as such for me because of the learning curve in figuring out how to set one up. I'm feeling very confident now going forward should I ever be stupid enough to think I should do this again. 🤔

I believe the craziness will be over by July. The numbers just don't justify destroying our way of life for something that is a little bit more lethal than the flu. Albeit, quickly worse for most who get that bad. Don't get me wrong, for there are too many people dying from this terrible virus. However, the millions they said would die at the start of this stay at home order have just not materialized. Whether or not the virus' lethality has mutated out of it or just was never that lethal to begin with.

I apologize if this angers someone who is struggling with the effects of this virus. Anyone lost to such an illness is one too many.

Run 'GG' :

Inner Pinion Shim = .052"
Pinion Preload = 32 in lbs
NRGS Bearing Shim = .117"
RGS Bearing Shim = .127"
Backlash = .0045" - .008"

Drive Pattern:



Coast Pattern:





The carrier bearings are the final press bearings. The new bearings minus the slop and with the shims being all on the outside have changed the side to side allowed motion. These have the proper backlash (according to the FSM), proper preload, and are closest to final so far.

The pinion can still be pulled apart. I'm thinking this is pretty close if not good, however I have an opinion from elsewhere that says I am too deep on the pinion.

Its been a bit since my last update, so after sleeping on GG: I torqued down the cap bolts and sealed it up. I pulled the rear out the next day and got started.




I got the rear stiffeners clearanced, and made some adjustments to the metal. To be honest, it seems like a little bit of overkill on the section of the rear frame between the lower control arm mounts and the rear spring perch brackets. Also that section seems to be a PITA to get correct for it appears the ZJ's rear frames are ever so slightly different from 91-93, 94/95-96, and 97-99. The ZJ DBM rear stiffeners have to be cut and clearanced.. he could have done a better job in designing a 'universal' to all ZJ years rear frame stiffener. It appears that this portion of the kit appears to be more of an XJ/ZJ universal stiffener TBH, and I have to admit I am a little disappointed in this section mostly due to the price of the whole kit at ~$350 shipped




Be careful if someone down the road is looking at this before they weld their stiffeners on: be exact on your section to be cut by where the rear body support 'bracket' meets the frame. DO NOT CUT TOO MUCH. It will leave you with too much space to fill and weld to. I just blazed through it and found my work to be less than optimum. It took several hours of welding, filling, grinding and re-welding to get it as best as I could. Had I been more accurate with my cuts and took out less: the welding and grinding would have been substantially less. Measure three times and cut once. Sorry, I didn't take a picture of what I did wrong.



So, after a couple of days dealing with the rear stiffeners, prepping, and painting: I moved on to swapping over brake lines, new calipers, new rotors, new pads, new ABS sensors, and readjusting the E-Brake cables.




I got to replacing the 225,000 mile fuel pump, with a new one due to preventative maintenance. I really thought hard about putting a trap door under the rear carpet to access the pump if I ever need to again, but decided that will have to wait for a while. I don't think I'll need to get at it for another 75,000 at least.




Add in a day or so lost waiting on parts and taking another day off to keep fresh, that takes me up to this evening.

This is where I finished for the night:



I still have to get the gas tank up there, tighten/re-weld the cat back exhaust, clearance the gas tank skid(rubs on the new adjustable Rubicon Express rear track bar), drive the heep in and out of the garage a few times before re-attaching/adjusting said track bar, button up the rear, and re-attach the bushie flares...

Hopefully tomorrow I can get the first 15 mile gear break-in completed after I install the front 1 1/4" wheel spacers, and then get started on painting the front track bar, and get started on the center sections of frame stiffeners.

Welp, she's back together for the most part. I went to move her around a little to re-center the rear before attaching the newer track bar to only find out that the angle on this bar leaves much to be desired. It was designed for ZJ and TJ models but it appears there was very little thought put into it being used sans a relocation bracket that RE also makes.

I bought the bar about three years ago in hopes to use it with this regear/swap, and the exhaust is in the way. The bar will line up but doesn't take the exhaust into consideration in it's design. It really has only one bend in it, and it seems a little bit small and hollow for the long term use.

These are for just an idea what the differences are.

RE 1620 Tubular aluminum 0 - 5" lift:



IRO Solid Steel 0-8" lift:



So I am at a stand still until the new rear bar arrives. I could go and strip the turdy-five for the stock bar and relocation bracket, but there would be drilling involved only to remove it later in lieu of this IRO bar. Besides, I probably can make my money back by selling both front and rear RE track bars, and the rear relocation bracket here locally. Provided I can find someone who isn't a dip-shit over marketplace or craigslist. I have not had good experiences as of late. People can really suck around here.

In the meantime, I'm gonna take a day off, and then get back at the center section frame stiffeners while getting the front finalized. Hopefully by the end of the week, all of the major enhancements, swaps, and repairs will be done. Then I can focus on finishing up the sun roof repair and a few other miscellaneous repairs that need to get done while I still have a garage.

Ho-Hum... making progress all slow n' steady like...

Spent a little bit of time today getting the front end wrapped up.



and the resulting spacing on the calipers:



It's slightly hard to see, but the gap has widened from about 1/16" (and slightly rubbing on one of the calipers: if you look really hard you can see it on the second picture) to about 3/8" with the 1 1/4" Spidertrax hub centric spacers. For the long term record, my 15" x 10" 5"x4.5" steelies have about 4" - 4 1/4" of backspacing on them already. I'll be moving to 16" or 17" rims the next set of tires I wind up buying, but not for another 60-70,000 miles.

I'm not sure if it's all that noticeable in this picture but she has more of a pit bull front end look now. Yes, that is one heck of a gash on the tire.

XJSuperman said:

I didn't realize your tires were new enough to have 60,000 miles left in them. Time to get out there and enjoy it I guess!

Whats left on the to-do list for this wrenchfest?

Click to expand...

Well yeah you're right, it's more like 40,000, but still a ton of meat left. The nipples are still on there. I may have driven 5-10,000, maybe, since I bought em. I know they're only supposed to be about 45k on these tires, but I got a good 30% more out of the last set of KO's(1st version).

The list to the finish line is the center section of the stiffeners(today and tomorrow), paint the front track bar(today/tomorrow), install rear trackbar (when it shows up, IRO has a 1-5 day S&H timeline, ugh!), get a proper alignment done, fix the ABS controller(I'll have a brief writeup on this one; too scant info out there on this fix), remove the old rockers and weld the new ones on, take it to stealership to get the ABS pump bled and reprogram the FOBs, and a bunch of miscellaneous repairs that include: a 4 year old sunroof track repair/replacement(a writeup I promised and didn't deliver yet, also 4 years old), recondition my tail light brush guards, change the oil, change the speedo gear from 31 to 39 tooth gear, replace rear wiper spring or just a new arm, repair the defrost lines on the rear window(5 or 6 lines broken), may have to rebuild the OD section of the trans for I have a 4th gear vibration(however could have been a pinion vibration in the turdy-five or a bad OD case bearing), and then try to figure out how to fix a BCM that never sleeps like it is supposed to(I might have a guy/shop capable with the right information)

Not thinking I'll acomplish all of that and be ready to move back to CO in 5 weeks, but I'm gonna be trying daily to knock it all out. You never know how much shit you have until you go to move it!

Gluckmysock said:

It's setting on all 4' s. Wheeling time! Love the color! Fukin mint!
I know. Gotta break in the new gears. Soot soot.

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Yeah, it was all red, off white, and blue... Hell yeah 'murica!

She's all prepped and ready to burn in the stiffeners. I wish I could say the same for the stiffeners. I am still finding issues with the cut and the bends in this DBM kit. These aren't as bad as the aforementioned issues, but IF I didn't have a shop press: I'd be sending emails. I expect a little bit of fittment issues here and there, but there are some glaring mistakes that one would think shouldn't be there. Maybe I'm just being bitchy. It is possible.

Hopefully, tomorrow I can have both sides burned in, ground, & etched by bed time.