? Rearend Question ?

[Phatman]

I'm getting some leaking around my pinion seal.

I just had this problem with an S10 I bought for my son to drive to college. I figured no big deal I'll just replace the seal. Now, if I remember correctly when setting the pinion crush it takes a good strong back to get enough torque to crush the seleve.

Well, I climbed under the truck with a 3/8" impact to remove the pinion nut, replaced the seal and tightened the pinion nut back on with the impact gun, thinking surely it wouldn't have enough torque to crush the seleve any more than it already was.

You guess it....the rearend took a crap within two days. I don't know if it was just it's time, it did have a lot of miles on it, or if I caused the problem?

I guess getting back to my qusetion, I'm sure you can see my reluctance to climb back under my car and do the same thing, how do you know when the pinion nut is adequately tightened without over tightening?

TIA....

 

[jetmech]

my father in law is pretty handy when it comes to rearends. He just did my buddy's gn rear end pinion seal. He marked the location of the nut , removed it , replaced the seal and reinstalled the nut 1/8 of a turn more w / the same crush collar. You do want the same preload on the pinion so you can take a dial torque wrench(inch #) and check the drag on the pinion before and torque the nut to the same preload torque.