axle shaft end play question

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abodyjoe said:
not true.. i have green bearing in my car and have installed them in many cars and have never had to remove the thrust block. yukon is the only axle guys that i know of that have this problem. i always get my axles from moser and have never had to remove the thrust block..
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I didn't say you "had" to.
 
If it were me, I'd pull the axles and physically inspect the axle bearings, sure sounds like the problem. That can be done without removing the unit from the car. Do you know what you have in the case, open or suregrip and which one?
 
sure grip, not sure which one. I'll pull the axles tonight and check out the bearings. Thanks
 
This is an image of what i pulled out of there. There is deffentily lateral playin the outer race of the bearing, had one person tell me its supposed to be a bit loose another said it was bad. I think i'm going to order new ones.
 

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I would think if you are getting any play other than rotational, replace them.
 
Yeah I bleeb das dem. I wouldn't be as worried about the bearing play as I would be the noise. You described a noise and that's almost always a sign of bearing failure. I do think they are not supposed to have any lateral play, though. I used to know the Timken bearing number off the top of my head. You don't have to get that whole kit.....but I forget what the number is. You can get just the bearing though. Having said that, if that was mine, I would go ahead and do both so I would know they were both new.
 
bigtooth said:
Well my father-in-law came over last night and we took a quick look. I wanted his opinion on the play I'm feeling. We discovered that the play is in both wheels and that its not like the wheel can be moved directly in and out, like the normal end play is supposed to in the stock setup, but its a rotational play that exists. So imagine if you had one hand on the tire at 9 oclock and the other at 3 oclock, pushing with one hand and pulling with the other, the tires can be rocked back and forth a bit in this manner. You can see the brake drum moving back and forth over the brake plate when its wiggled.

The pops suggested this might mean the inner bearings are toast, as in this case the pivot point of the movement is the outer wheel bearing which means that the inner end of the axle shafts are moving around much more then the bit we're moving the tire in and out. Also, he said it felt like there was a bit to much slop in how much you could spin the tire back in forth in its conventional rotation direction before it moved the drive shaft, about 3/8 to 1/2 an inch i'd say.

We're going to have a second opinion from a mechanic friend, but at this point I think we may tear the whole thing out to look things over.

What do you guys think?
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There is no inner axle shaft bearing....only the carrier bearings. If you've got play in those, you have some major problems in the 3rd member.
 
bigtooth said:
I'm still going to drop the center out and look things over, and new fluid.
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That would be a good idea. I would not take apart anything as that requires everything to be set up again, just give it a good inspection.
 
cudamark said:
There is no inner axle shaft bearing....only the carrier bearings. If you've got play in those, you have some major problems in the 3rd member.
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This is exactly what I found. The entire diff is loose inside the carrier bearings, about a 1/16 of an inch, absolutly zero preload.
So far only a visual inspection, but there doesnt seem to be any bad pitting or wear on the gears, but it looks like theres no distinct pattern on them, I think thats because its been moving around.

Once my father in law finds his dial gauge we're going to pull the bearings apart inspect and try to readjust the pre-load on the bearings and set the backlash.
 
IF you decide to pull the carrier bearings to inspect them, be sure and mark the bearing caps so they go back on in the same orientation.
 
So I got all the new bearings in, and got the new carrier bearings tightened up, along with setting the correct backlash. But I still have my oscillating vibration.
What method do you use to read the angle of the pinion and the tail housing, I want to check the pinion angle, but am unsure of how to get a correct angle reading.

The frequecy of the oscillation gets faster when you step on the gas and gets much less with my foot off the gas.
 
Don't discount you might have a bent axle, wheel, etc etc
 
If the carrier was moving around when the bearing adjustment was wrong, it probably wore a weird pattern in the ring and pinion.
 
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