Fortunately the spare I had out back had good bearings in it with a trac lock. I ended up pulling the ring gear off the spare since it had some rust on the gears and re using my semi float gears on the spare carrier. I then placed all of the spare bearings and carrier into the new housing I picked up.
You must be registered for see images attach
Part way through assembly.
I was playing with the gear pattern. Once I got the pattern I wanted I put in a new crush sleeve and set the pinion bearings pre load. On a side note, the parts stores only carry the 8.8 crush sleeve. After some searching I found the 8.8, 9 inch and 10.25 all run the same sleeve.
It took some serious cheater bars to set the pinion preload crushing the sleeve. I almost thought my harbor freight breaker bar was not going to make it lol. Once I got close to the pre load I wanted I was torquing about one flat at a time until I had what I wanted.
After I got a good pre load and set the side shims on the carrier I rechecked the play. I had .013 backlash, it was in the .005 to .015 range so I called it good and buttoned it up.
The rest was bolting it all in and re making the brake lines.
Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk