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rear axle, crushable spacer?

Flemming

By Flemming
in Drivetrain

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Flemming Enthusiast

Flemming

Posted
Posted

hi

I am in the progress of renewing the pinion shaft oil seal.

I am a little confused. It seems like one can over tighten the pinion shaft nut and destroy a "crushable spacer". I heard it through the grapevine though.

AFAIK - according to various manuals - I shouldn't worry. It should be a rather straight forward job to renew the pinion shaft oil seal, done with the rear axle in sit.

any comments  most welcome.

regards Flemming

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Nick Jones Grand Master

Nick Jones

Posted
Posted

Depends what car/diff you have:

Earlier diffs have solid spacers/shims and on these you can just undo the nut, pull off the flange, change the seal, replace the flange and do up the nut - no problem.

Later diffs (3.89 and 3.63 plus maybe a few 3.27) fitted to Spitfires and GT6s had these stupid crushable spacer (to save BL a few pennies >:(_.  These are usually indicated by having a cap over the nut.  You can still change the seal, but you have to be more careful.
Remove the nut cover, carefully mark the position of the nut relative to the threaded shaft and undo counting the EXACT number of turns.  The flange is removed and seal changed as before.  When refitting the nut wind it on the same number of turns as you made taking off until the marks you made before line up.  Replace split pin/cap etc.  If you do it up any more the spacer will collapse more which will upset the bearing preload.

If in doubt, use the second method!

(As and aside I've had a couple of diffs where I could have done with crushable spacers to let me squeeze the excessive free-play out of the pinion bearing - but that would be a hideous bodge... ::))

Nick

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