I know the bearing puller you're talking about, if I had it that mess would have been over with 2 days ago. Lack of shims is not the problem here, lack of means to rearrange them from side to side is. And right now I simply can't afford said tool. So the point is to get is as best as I can with what I'm able to adjust now (pinion depth), with the idea that later when finances allow it the thing will be revisited and proper setup will be performed (since I wanna run a limited slip anyways). So no, I'm not haphazardly trying to put the thing together, if that were the case I'd have it all closed up and ready to hang under truck already.
Anyways, still working on it, this is what I got now - drive:
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Coast:
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I think there is a noticeable improvement over what I started with, especially on the drive side. And idk how I measured backlash first time around, but I'm exactly at .007 now, verified with two dial indicators. How does pinion depth look now? Still a bit too far out?
And what's the backlash specs anyways, according to the book? I see one place online says 6-10 thau, then next site says 4-9, etc. Does anyone know exactly what the Dana engineers want it to be? Say, if I move the pinion in a bit more, and end up with .004 backlash, would that be considered too tight? Or would it still be acceptable?