GTAlover

I recently put in a brand new set of 4.10 gears (I think they are Motive). Anyway, when I put them in I used the old pinion bearing and shim from the factory 3.23 pinion and put them on my new 4.10 pinion. I used a new crush sleeve and pinion nut and snugged it up till all the play in the pinion was gone. I didn't have a inch pound tool to set preload, so I just stopped turning the nut when all the play was out. I put in the new ring gear and shimmed it to .008 backlash and put it all together and the gears whine pretty good. I didn't have the tool to measure pinion distance or the preload so my question is now that it's all set up and I drove about 10 miles on these gears are they ruined or if I took it to a shop to have them change all the bearings and set the pinion depth and preload and get it in there perfect is there any chance they will quite down or is the damage already done? I've set a few Mustangs gears like this one and they turned out fine, but I guess Chevy rearends require more precision. Let me know what you think...

ede

they're trash, the damage is there and it'll only get worse. not much point buying the correct tools when you can trash gear sets and then pay someone to set them up the 2nd time around. ford rears require the same set up as anyone else, if you did a ford rear this way and it worked you got lucky.