Replacing Salisbury pinion seal

[alaskajosh]

Today I replaced my Salisbury pinion seal and cranked the big flange nut down tight. Feeling satisfied at another job completed I came in to thumb through LRM and what do I open up to but an article on replacing pinion seals.

Their article said to take great care in not tightening that nut down past where it was previously "in order to maintain the loading on the collapsible spacer".

So what have I done? Bodged the job by carelessly cranking that nut down? What will happen?

Thank you.

Kind regards, Josh

[I Leak Oil]

You've possibly changed the preload on the pinion bearings by over compressing the crush sleeve. Better check it out and get a new sleeve if needed.
Jason T.

[greenmeanie]

The torque wrench is your friend.

[daveb]

I've heard that it takes 100's of ft/lbs to crush the sleeve.

You've possibly changed the preload on the pinion bearings by over compressing the crush sleeve. Better check it out and get a new sleeve if needed.
Jason T.

[greenmeanie]

From memory the nut is torqued to 125 ft lbs and that does deform the sleeve per its designed function. I don't know how much it would take to deform it significantly beyond its designed installed length.

[alaskajosh]

Well I rattled it on there with a 1/2" drive Snap-On impact gun. I guess I can take a torque wrench at this point and check what I've done...
Otherwise, I can replace that sleeve thingy? Through the pinion end?

Is there a torque number that the drive flange should turn at indicating correct bearing load? It seems like that number would be more meaningful than the nut torque.

Thanks gents--

Kind regards, Josh

[Mercedesrover]

The crush collar takes more ft.-lbs. to start crushing then you end up torquing it to in the end. If you remove and re-install a drive flange you need to make sure you don't torque the nut down any tighter than it was. Crushing the collar more than it was to start with will cause too much load on the pinion bearings and they will overheat and fail on you. If the truck is on the road, run it for a few miles and see if it's getting hot. Maybe you got lucky.

If you need to change the collar you need to pull the ring and pinion gear out.

Here's a good instruction manual from Yukon Gear.

[alaskajosh]

Thanks everyone. Yes it appears this is a lesson I'll learn the hard way.

I drew the axles out to give the pinion a feel and it was quite tight. Without a doubt tighter than bearings should be.

I pulled the crush sleeve and will go into my local Dana/Spicer dealer tomorrow to see if the sleeve out of Dodge's Dana 60 look to be the same.

Kind regards, Josh

[alaskajosh]

For anyone's information who may be searching on this subject in the future: Some Dana/Salisbury parts exchanges work and the crush sleeve is not one of them.

Since I couldn't find any Salisbury stuff with RN(?) I gave Great Basin Rovers a call and, as usual, Bill was very helpful.

Kind Regards, Josh