I cleaned up the center section and bells today, removed and dressed the mating surfaces, and assembled the whole assembly to do an initial carrier bearing preload check. Turns out I had the opposite problem you had, TBone69. With no gaskets in place the carrier had no resistance. Considering the thin gaskets are .006", and shims to install behind the carrier bearing inner races are only .005" I expect that I'll have to have a minimum of three of the carrier bearing shims to have any chance of carrier bearing preload. The choice I'll need to make now is where, and how many shims to install. Thinking that it's an old, worn gearset that might have an abundance of backlash worn into it, I'm thinking of adding two shims (.010") on the driver's side to move the ring gear more into the pinion, and only one under the passenger side. Does that seem a reasonable plan? I already placed an order with Mike's A-Ford-Able parts today, but since it's not going to ship until tomorrow I'm going to try to catch that shipment to include 4 of the bearing shims, for a total of .020". If you don't mind me tagging more onto this banjo rebuild thread, it might be another example of how a rebuild will go, and perhaps it will relate to what someone else might run into themselves. Just let me know if that's OK. Thanks Lynn
Early this morning I took a quick look at the carrier bearings and decided to add a couple to my parts order. One bearing had some pitting on the rollers of the bearing and it turns out too that the one carrier bearing inner race was loose enough to pull off the carrier by hand. I'm expecting that it had also worn the seat face on the driver side (ring gear side) of the carrier so that's probably where I'll add shims to be able to get bearing preload. I can always space it back the other way with center/bell gaskets as needed to get desired ring/pinion backlash. I'll also need to find someone to knurl the carrier so that the carrier bearing is once again a press fit. After all of this my main concern now is that the keyway slot on one axle is quite worn. The keyways in the hubs are in much nicer condition. I'm guessing that the nut on the hub was loose at some point and it wallowed out the keyway a bit on the axle. I'm replacing the axle/hub keys, so that should tighten things up better than the old, somewhat worn old keys. Lynn
Lynn, It sounds like with new carrier bearings and possibly a shim under each side you will be in business. Gear set at this point doesn't apply as you are just trying to get the carrier preload set. I see in the following post you can slide the bearing off by hand. This shouldn't be, I had the same issue but fortunately had another carrier. You can have the surface knurled to restore the interference fit of the bearing onto the carrier. In a pinch I suppose you could dimple it a few times with a center punch. I would only do that as a last resort though. One of the things I learned during the rebuild is there is a lot of trial and error and assemble and disassemble of parts to get things right. Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Anyone help - got a Model A rear axle and cannot get the pinion gear off the drive shaft. I've followed Tom Endy guide (puller and tightening/tapping) and it doesn't move. Am I missing something obvious or any other ideas (heat?) Any help will definitely decrease my frustration with this......
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