adumb

in the middle of my first gear install and the one problem I have is that I don't have enough experience reading gear patterns. it looks pretty good to me but this is the only one I have seen besides pictures on the internet. take a look and tell me what you think. it is much appreciated

pinion bearing preload is 17-22
backlash is .009-.010

mjr46

I work the pattern back and fort by holding the ring gear, so as to make the pattern clear, looks like you either used to much marking compound or didn't work it enough......from what I can tell, looks like a little low/low toe on the pull side and high heel a tad on the coast side.......but don't be concerned and get caught up in patterns......I've had numerous installs like such and they are quiet.....more so look at tooth contact/depth making sure tooth contact is near centered on the rings gear.....if they are ford racing gears?? the oem pinion shim is what I use 99 times out of 1000 and I have the oem tools for checking this = very expensive and have verified it tons of times......after that it's just set the preload on the carrier bearings/back lash....I always measure the thickness of the oem shims so as to maintain proper preload on the side bearings......it's rare i CAN ever use both of the oem shims to get proper backlash....often the oem shims produce excessive backlash when swapping gears, either way i END UP in the .008-.012 spec.

adumb

thanks for taking the time to reply... lots of good info that makes me think I am on the right track. hard to tell how deep the contact is in the pic but to me it is more than halfway down probably closer to 3/4. They are ford racing gears and I did reuse the original shim on the pinion. I wasn't able to reuse the shims for the carrier though. I had to go through the process of taking and adding as well as making sure I stayed close to the original preload. if I remember correctly my new shim pack is .005 thicker than the old one. is that close enough or should I try to get the total thickness of all shims closer?

if I had a hydraulic press I would definatly mess around with pinion shims to see what kind of changes I would get but the only acess I have is a friend that lives 40 minutes away.

do you know of any homemade diy ways of removing the pinion bearing?

mjr46

don't worry about changing the pinion shim...........I have rarely had to use anything different than oem pinion shim on ford racing gears, they basically work off a master housing depth theroy, don't get caught up in pattern, there are more than one acceptable patterns for quiet gears.......often I can flip oem carrier shims from one side to the other and reduce backlash and if not I often can use at least one of the oem shims and aftermarket for the other side, if I do it that way often the one oem shim I have in conjunction with it is either a .007 to .010 shim then the other side is made up of aftermarket shims to get me in the range

adumb

not knowing what shim was under my pinion was a silly mistake by me. i took it apart and measured it. turns out to be a .030 shim. i am going to order two more bearings. one to grind out and use for a slip fit and the other to actually press on once i get the pattern correct.

i don't plan on selling this car and usually put 5000 miles on it a year so it will only benefit me in the long run if i do it 100% correct.

adumb

i also tried measuring pinion heads because i heard you can come up with a shim that way but with just calipers i found it very difficult to get a repeating number. since i have to wait for my new bearings i am probably going to just bring them into work to get a good measurement on each one.

mjr46

if the oem shim was .030, use it!! I told you once to stop trying to get a perfect pattern.........I have installed tons of ford racing gears and even own the 800 dollar oem pinion shim checking tool and it always verifies the oem shim has been correct and using such as long as backlash and preload on carrier bearings is correct, has never produced noise........there are more than one acceptable patterns that don't produce noise....google it. you are overthinking it with ford racing gears and if you strive to get a perfect pattern on ford racing gears, you will either find out that you have to have excessive shimming or almost none........and that definately is not a recipe for success with ford racing gears