my 77 4x4 rebuild

[bake74]

     Those are the ones I have been thinking about getting for my truck, I am not a fan of the digital Dakota's.

[winky]

Blue is my favorite color. And I'm not either bake I really like these gauges I think there gonna look nice in my truck

- I'm Mobile!

[Greybeard]

I like em too, are they dimmable?

[winky]

they are suppose to be dim-able we will find out for sure next week. i have a few questions about pinion angle :/ i know it has been covered a million times Ive even read a lot of forum posts on it.... I know how everyone here is eager to help people out got my angle finder in last week. t case is 0* drive shaft is about 15* and the pinion is 10* if im correct you are suppose to subtract the pinion and drive  shaft angle to get true pinion angle?? what would be a "good" pinion angle? i have a 1410 joint at the diff. and a 1410/1310 joint at the t case. im planning on cutting the old spring perches off tomorrow and welding the new ones on and i want to set my pinion angle while im in there. If we are slow Friday i will probably have all the sensors for the gauges wired up and working.

[thirsty]

Good question Winky.
Unfortunately I don't have an answer for the correct angle. I do have experience with it though and went through it when I used to run lifted CJ5's. Too little angle and it is hard on u-joints and pinion bearing. Too much angle and you could starve the pinion bearing.

I bet Bake74 has some experience with this. I haven't done pinion angles in 25 years but I bet he has.
The one thing that I do remember is try to find a happy medium between the two stock angles but that is not always possible depending on wheel base and amount of lift.

[Greybeard]

I'm not going to answer that for a few reason's, I will say it all depends.

The biggest reason is I've never had to set pinion angle because my lift never went over six inches and with that I used blocks engineered for the task. I say it all depends also because IIRC if you use a traction device that totally prohibits the pinion from climbing the ring gear the angles can held closer to a neutral (equal at both ends) position. If no traction aid, and the pinion is free to climb, that needs to be taken into account so it's not set too high.

I personally see setting pinion angle as complicated. On the other hand it's easy. If you have a rock-crawler with 14" of wheel travel at each side (about 7" in the middle at independent flex) the question becomes how much will it squat under acceleration (both springs compressed equally)? On the other hand a mud truck will seldom use even a fraction of available flex so it would not need the same degree of precision...or would it?

I've always been told that the optimum angle is when both ends of the drive shaft (or both U-joints) angles remain equal or as close to it as possible during any phase of movement. Phase of movement is the operative term here. The u-joints HAVE to be in phase with each other at all times or a severe vibration, or binding, will result. You can experience this result on your own if you want to take a chance. Just pull the drive shaft slip-joint apart and put it together a spline or two off from where it was and drive it. Something bad will definitely happen. Keeping a drive shaft in phase is pretty common knowledge. But that also extends to the angles each end runs at. But as I said ...it depends.

I saw a lot of different fixes over the years, I don't know which ones worked or not. I saw some guys point the pinion straight at or a little lower than the drive shaft, some equaled both angles (front and rear the same, doesn't work at all after a certain amount of lift). However, never put the pinion above the line of the drive shaft...that is begging for bad things to happen. The pinion will always rise under load, how much to compensate for that is..... per individual truck and lift and usage, and horsepower and, and, and.....

Maybe someone else that works on rear-ends a lot will come in with the answer, I'd be happy to find out if there is a good rule of thumb or if I am over-thinking it. I just know that driving down the highway at 70 the drive shaft is spinning as fast as the engine so balance, phase, joint angles, etc. all need to be taken into account. The bigger the diameter of the drive shaft the more that comes into play...I had a 5 or 6" (IIRC) drive shaft built for my truck and it had to be balanced extremely good to run smooth. It was built by a friend at a semi-truck drive-line shop.

I would say your best bet is call ORD or Sadler ( http://www.sadlerpowertrain.com/index.html ) power train and talk to a professional about it. Sadler is located here in Iowa but they talk to foreigners too LOL.

[winky]

i didnt even think about the drive shaft being in phase....i bought it in parts.... drive shaft was in one.. pile slip yoke was in another.... lol i guess it might help someone with the right answers to know im running a swb truck with a sm465 and np205. also has 6" of lift "rear has 4" shackles witch point the pinion up some.

[Greybeard]

a swb truck with a sm465 and np205

  THE ONLY WAY TO ROLL! Hahahaha!!

Six inch lift on it's own? I probably wouldn't worry about it, with new longer shackles IDK. If it has all spring and shackle I have no clue. Blocks are carved to compensate for the stock springs, start changing those and ??. A 10-1/2" 14 bolt has an oil pump of sorts to get oil to the pinion bearings I believe since it has two bearings in front and one in the rear. So oiling does not tip the scales like other two bearing housings do. But there can probably still be too much tilt just the same. Six or eight inches of lift shouldn't require that much change, a degree or two at most for which I would be comfortable using wedges myself. YMMV.


A story, just a little unrelated....
I ruined one 14 bolt once not by oil starvation but by tightening the wheel bearings too much. It started raining one day when I was doing the brakes in my driveway in Dellwood Mo. I quick covered the brakes with plastic bags and didn't get back around to working on it for a week. I had put the hubs on and tightened them, that much I remembered doing I guess, but instead of double checking I went ahead and buttoned everything up. The wheels spun and seemed free enough and they weren't loose when yanked on.

About driving about 75 miles to south St. Louis , coming back there was a lot of squealing (and head scratching) The noise became awful for the last 30 miles or so running down the interstate and we were still confounded as to what it was going so we were just trying to get to my buddy's house who is in the truck with me. The funny part is I got and out and checked both rear brakes and the hubs during all this noise and the hubs never got hot.

When I rounded a right hand turn near my buddy's house and I accelerated it didn't really accelerate right. I did speed up but about half of what it should have done at the foot feed setting on the peddle. Hmmm? Looking in my mirrors I noticed my right tire and wheel where about a foot outside the wheel well. That's not right.... It ate the end of the spindle right off the tube and everything slid out during the turn. The axle itself held the truck in the air. Stopping was also fun since the brakes on that side now had nothing around them to contain the hydraulic pressure. Front brakes still worked though. I was about three hundred yards from my buddies house so we just drove it very carefully on up to his place and he took me to a junkyard, I got another one with a gov-lock and the right gears for about $150 and we swapped it out that day and I drove it home with only one rear shock.  Gov-locks are great! But in this case so are full floating rear ends. I learned a lesson...or two or three. No harm no foul but it could have been really bad had it happened at any other time. Young an..well you know the rest...

[winky]

i have luck about like that. i rebuilt the rear end in my 90 model chevy when i was 17 (first time i ever rebuilt a rearend) i ended up tearing it back down to double check everything haha! all was good on that day but i have had a LOT of stuff happen so now sometimes if i don't double check my self  im slightly paranoid i guess you could say. I honestly dont think my pinion angle is too bad off? i haven't got around to checking it with the rear wheels drooped though. the one ton axle spring perches are 3/4" close together than the half ton so my springs are doing this \  / so thats the main reason for the spring perches. traction bars will be added soon as well. they are next on the list after making sure everything is functional and 100% drivable.

[winky]

im tore between welding this joker up tomorrow or waiting and ordering a cv joint to put onto my drive shaft. so confusing when there are 1,000 articles on something and half of them contradict the other half :/

[winky]

got the lights on the bumper mounted today.. thats about all though. we got slammed at work





lol... my friend didnt believe that you could drive on these lights.... soooo... i showed him got a little heavy on the gas when pulling up on the light and shot it across the parking lot haha... just some slight concrete rash the second time around i pulled up on it no problems at all took it into the shop hooked it up and bam! good as new.

[bake74]

they are suppose to be dim-able we will find out for sure next week. i have a few questions about pinion angle :/ i know it has been covered a million times Ive even read a lot of forum posts on it.... I know how everyone here is eager to help people out got my angle finder in last week. t case is 0* drive shaft is about 15* and the pinion is 10* if im correct you are suppose to subtract the pinion and drive  shaft angle to get true pinion angle?? what would be a "good" pinion angle? i have a 1410 joint at the diff. and a 1410/1310 $#*() joint at the t case. im planning on cutting the old spring perches off tomorrow and welding the new ones on and i want to set my pinion angle while im in there. If we are slow Friday i will probably have all the sensors for the gauges wired up and working.

     Winky, I will try to answer this as simple as I can and still give you the info you need. 
     I have done many jeeps with short drive lines over the years and as many longer caged crawlers.  So in very short wheel base vehicles you have to worry about "drive line vibration" which transmits the vibration through the whole vehicle and is very annoying to say the least.  The best and simplest way of me saying this is to eliminate drive line vibration is to have the tnsfr angle the same as the rear diff angle, by having them the exactly the same ( as long as the drive shaft and your wheels are balanced) you will have no vibration issues. 
     (Disclaimer) if you are running soft springs or a vehicle that has axle wrap, the angle of the rear should be 1 - 2 degrees in the negative, this is so that when your are under power the angle will increase a few degrees because of the soft springs and or axle wrap and you will be even in the angles. 
      A short article on this is by FourWheeler Magazine if you want to read it. 
     Now remember that drive line vibration does not always show up in longer wheel base vehicles because you are not trying to transfer  all the power through a 2-2.5 ft drive line.
     With that being said, since you are already using universal u-joints and not anything fancy like CV or Cardans style yolks, the response you will hear and read a lot is, as long as the yolks can turn around with out hitting (you have to flex your vehicle to test this, not just have it on level pavement) you are fine.  And that answer is correct for the yolks themselves, but there is more to it than just the yolks.
     The most IMPORTANT thing I can say is this.  When you are setting up your axles, keep in mind the pinion bearing, it has to stay lubricated, so if you clock your axles too high you will have to overfill you diff to keep the pinion bearing lubricated.
     
     Here's a pic of what a universal set should look like, now granted this is 2wd so 4wd could be higher angles instead of level.  I got it from Tom's Woods custom driveline page.  It also is a good read.
 
     

[winky]

thankyou for the info bake sorry about the late thanks lol...

thought i might update this some. been busy with work and my new to me 03 2500 hd Z71 brought the truck home friday and since then i pulled all of the wiring and cleaned it up quite a bit.. everything i did not plan on using was removed from the harness. since all my gauges are electric i have a LOT more wiring then the old truck (vss, oil psi, lighting, shift lights etc..) on top of that i have switches for all my lights and in cab controls for my winch so i had no choice but to get half way neat with the wiring.
The battery i bought a while back wont hold a charge... i guess i let it sit too long without being used haha trickle charger has got it up to 4v  so its hard to test what im wiring , that being said im at a stand still until monday when i can grab anther battery from the shop took a pic with might 2 work lights and 1 light bar on. no head lights or anything just the LEDs at 4 volts (keep that in mind when looking at brightness)





i also managed to do this friday :S

[Greybeard]

I had a rag joint on my present truck come apart seconds after I got of the highway and into my employers parking area. I never even knew it was loose. The only other time I've seen one break was when a tire was lodged in between a rock and a hard place and the driver just twisted steering wheel harder.    

[winky]

luckily i was just loading my truck when it happen to me :S kinda worries me now. 40" tires aren't forgiving i guess