Re: Resting to running!

Posted by DavidPackard On 2023/3/28 14:09:25
53 Cavalier
It sounds like you might be diving into several maintenance tasks on the car’s ‘rear-end’. I would advise that you DO NOT tackle the pinion seal job with the axles removed. If the axles are removed and you rotate the pinion gear then the ring gear, side axle gears, differential (spider) gears, and thrust block will also rotate, and that rotation may (emphasis on vague) ‘flip’ the thrust block and defeat the ‘floating’ feature that is required. The safe play is to change the pinion seal with the axles and brake backing plates installed. The rest of the brake hardware such as drums, shoes, cylinders, springs, etc. may be either installed or removed during the pinion seal replacement, but you will gain additional confidence that the pinion nut has been reinstalled correctly if the brakes are operational.

The caution on this subject is based on the inability to tell whether the thrust block is correctly positioned until the point when the bearing clearance is being checked. Packard shop manuals have the same type of precautionary guidance when installing the ‘third member’. That guidance suggests the use of axle bearing grease to ‘glue’ the thrust block in the correct position prior to installing the differential assembly. The best in car check requires two people, both pushing their axle toward the center of the car and confirming some amount of axle motion occurs during this ‘push of war’. The thrust block translation is easily detected then the axles are cycled back and forth.

When forum contributor qbert was working on something similar I provided my thoughts on this subject here: Re: 1953 Clipper Ultramatic pinion nut size [Post-War (1946-54)] - Packard Motor Car Information (packardinfo.com)

dp

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