My Blue Jeep

[Ron84cj]

I then put the wheels on and had the wife hold one side while I spun the other. The locker unlocked and clicked away like it should. Filled it up with 85-140 and it's good to go!

So time to move on to the Dana 30. Just look at those little gears, when my wife saw them she thought they were cute. Lol

I used the same bearing separater on this to get the bearings off and took out the gears. Yup, a drill bit again.

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[Ron84cj]

I took off the hubs, bearings, etc. Laying them down in order.



If there is one thing that drives me nuts it's seeing this. Every single Jeep I have taken apart the spindle nuts are damaged from people smacking on them. Why? The correct spindle nut socket only costs like $10. That's cheaper than buying new nuts from damaging them. I don't get it.

As I mentioned earlier I had wierd rotational noise. It was really load at sand blast and freaked me out considering I drive it from out of state. The only times I hear it is in four wheel drive under load. Otherwise I couldn't hear anything. While I was taking things apart, I had what looked like chocolate milk come out of my wheel bearing on the right front. Also the race for the bearing was scored. So obviously water got in there. I can't imagine how that happened. After unbolting the spindle it came right off with a couple light taps of a soft face hammer. Anything more then just use a puller.
At this point I pulled the cover to let it drain. While it was draining I pulled the axles out. By the way, this is a great time to do the axle u joints and the ball joints. I just did them 5,000 miles ago so I'm good.

 

[Ron84cj]

The axle is so much easier to remove from the Jeep and get on to the jack stands with all that weight out of it.


Yup, my garage is a mess. But at least I'm making really good progress.

Once again I labeled the caps L and R. The carrier came out a little bit easier on this axle than the AMC 20. I was able to just pry it out.


The pinion nut came off without much of a fuss and the yoke was on there just snug enough that I couldn't get it off by hand.

 

[Ron84cj]

I pulled out the pinion seal and used a pipe to tap out the axle seals.


By the way, when you remove the pinion races/clean the housing, be careful of this edge. It wasn't deburred from when it was machined at the factory and I sliced my hand on it really bad.

 

[Ron84cj]

Hey! Check it out, you can actually read it this time! +2.

Since the install kit didn't come with a new oil slinger, I will need to get the old one off. Even if it is in bad shape I at least wanted to measure it and make sure there weren't any shims in there either.

 

[MrBeep]

Great job. Looking forward to seeing it at Sand Blast also.

 

[MrBeep]

"Old man Knowledge" To answer your question on alternate tools for removing spindle nuts, in 1974 I purchased a brand spanken new "Jeep" model 30 Spindle Nut Socket for the unbelievable price of $29.99. I had it until 2 years ago and cant seem to find it now. I probity put it up where I wouldn't loose it.

 

[Ron84cj]

$29.99 back in 1974 is somewhere around $150 today. That's a lot more expensive so that makes more sense.

I just realized that in my last post that was my new pinion gear. I pressed on the new bearing and the oil slinger too. It was in perfect shape and no, there weren't any shims in there either.
Before I went any further I installed the axle seals before I forgot. I put a THIN coat of sealer on the outside of the seal and lightly tapped in the seals with a race driver being very careful to keep it even. There is a special tool for this, but this worked just fine.

 

[bigwalton]

This is great stuff!

After that I bolted in the axle, bled brakes, etc. I also forgot to mention something else, I drilled out the threads on the yoke and installed u bolts instead of the dippy straps as well as new u joints.
View attachment 63343

Worth a mention that you have to be careful with the u-bolts, you can't just crank down on them as hard as you can because you can deform or even crack the caps and then you'll lose the joint.

 

[Ron84cj]

I definitely agree, it would not be hard to accidentally over tighten the u bolts.

Since the outer pinion bearing has nothing to do with the depth I went ahead and installed the new outer race.

I went ahead and bought some new bearings for the carrier to make set-up bearings. I measured the new and old ones just for grins. Both of the new ones were obviously the same, one old one was worn .001 and the other was worn .004. This is why I disagree with people when they say you can use old bearings for setup. My backlash would have changed on the final install if I used them. So I used a sanding flap wheel in my drill press and made them a slip fit on the carrier. After that I started adding shims on each side until I had zero side to side movement. Spun it around and my run-out measured .0015.

 

[Ron84cj]

The G2 install kit didn't include the oil slingers or the oil baffle that goes between the inner race and the housing. For setup purposes I didn't want to accidentally damage the the baffle so I put in a shim that was the same thickness instead of it which was .020. Since my new pinion is 0 and my old one was +2, I added the .002 to the overall depth and proceeded to put in my dumby inner race.

 

[Ron84cj]

I've figured it was time to update this and I guess I didn't realize I never finished documenting my Dana 30 build. Lol. Sorry.

Before I put the ring gear on, I had to install the Aussie locker. The ring gear would've gotten in the way. Just like before I checked the clearance and it was too tight at first. I measured the washers and used the two thinnest ones to get it within spec.

 

[Ron84cj]

Next I cleaned up the surfaces really really ridiculously well and bolted on/torqued the ring gear to spec.

I put in my pinion gear and checked my rotational torque. Then on to my carrier. I switched around the shims until I got the backlash within spec.

Painted the gears and rechecked... Pinion gear was too far away.

After adding a shim (don't remember the thickness) to the pinion and re adjusting the backlash again I ended up with a nice pattern.

 

[Ron84cj]

Now that I have that established I did my final install. I replaced that shim for the oil slinger and installed the new race.

On a Dana 30, instead of using a crush sleeve it uses shims right here....

Then the bearing goes on with the big washer.

Hold off on installing the pinion seal. The pinion nut gets torqued to 200 ft lbs. But do it in small increments so you don't accidentally over tighten the bearing. If you hit your rotational torque before you fully torque down the pinion nut, then you need to add more shims. Once you get it then install the seal and tighten up the pinion nut for good. I checked it one last time for good measure.

 

[Ron84cj]

I forgot to mention this before. The shims go between the carrier and bearings. So I had to make some setup bearings.

Now that I have it set up, I pressed on the new bearings and installed the carrier. Torqued down the caps and checked the pattern one last time. It still looked great.

Bolted on the cover and moved on...

 

[Ron84cj]

So I have this really bad habit of always wanting to drive through water with this thing. So I searched a bit online to see what others did for waterproofing. Basically when there is air in the hot hub and it hits cold water I guess the air acts almost like a vacuum sucking water in past the seals. I drive this thing out of state often and I wanted a little more piece of mind driving home. On think it was on jeepforum I saw a guy add a grease zerk on each hub so you can completely fill the void with grease. Basically where grease is water can't be. Just drill and tap the hub for a grease zerk. Make sure it comes through between the wheel bearings.

And yes, the grease gun does clear the stud.

 

[Ron84cj]

Next mod is to the spindle. Drill it so the void between the axle and the spindle can be filled.

I honestly have no idea how well this works. But I figured it was easy and cheap. So why not.

After that I went on to installing the axle.

 

[Ron84cj]

This is where the grease is added. This cavity is where water likes to come in and get into your bearings. That dippy little seal in the above pic is all that is stopping it! So I pumped it full and rotated the axle, then pumped it up again and rotated. Lots and lots of grease!

My bearings were shot (from water) so I replaced the bearings, races, and seals.

 

[Skidmark]

Thanks Ron. I have to do gears soon and this will really help.

 

[Ron84cj]

I'm glad this helps. If you have any questions please let me know.