I'll be setting up some gears soon in a Ford nine inch rearend, I see there are solid spacers available now instead of using the stock type crush sleeve on the pinion. Should I use the solid spacer? what are the benifits? Will it need to be shimmed? Should I assemble with a crush sleeve first then measure the sleeve to determine what amount of shims will be needed with the spacer? Any help on this would be appreciated. Bob
baddbob71
Ford used a solid spacer in the 9" Ford with the Daytona pinion housing. This was developed for racing in the early '60s. It will increase pinion bearing life by making the pinion assembly more stable. I didn't know that the solid spacer was available for the standard pinion housing. When Ford assembled the Daytona pinion housing they used select fit spacers. You will have to shim yours. This is a trial and error deal where you have to put it together and measure the bearing preload and then take it apart and change the shim.
You can smash an old crush sleeve flat or put some shims behind a used one to get the pinion depth correct but I have found it more trouble than it's worth. It really doesn't matter on a 9in. You don't need to move the crush sleeve to set the pinion depth. When we were running 8 3/4 chry. I always used the 1 7/8 case because it didn't use a crush sleeve.
As Dave said, you set the pinion depth first. There is no 'getting lucky', you either set it to specs or not with a shim between the bearing and the pinion. The crush sleeve is for bearing preload only and you can not change pinion depth buy increasing or decreasing the preload. You might be able to get the appearance is decreasing the depth buy having loose preload, but the inner bearing will fully seat during load and the pinion will be at the actual depth and the outter bearing will be unseated.
You can still preload the bearings against their outer races on a 10/12 bolt without a crush sleeve by tightening the pinion nut until the desired preload is reached. The pinion and yoke will pull the bearings against their outer races as you tighten the pinion nut (use an old one for trial assembly). The crush sleeve only preloads the inner races of the front and rear pinion bearings to keep the front bearing inner race from turning on the pinion stem. Install the crush sleeve after determining the proper amount of pinion shims from the pattern. So no need for the crush sleeve until final assembly.
Actulally the crush spacer is there to apply tension on the pinion nut, much like stretching a rod bolt when torquing it. If you just tighten a pinion nut enough to apply 20 inch pounds of bearing preload the nut will have very little tension on it. The spacer allows you to get the nut really tight while just putting a little preload on the bearings.The more tension you put on the nut the more stable the pinion assembly will be. That is why a solid spacer will allow the pinion bearings to last longer. Crush spacers allow quicker assembly on the assembly lines.
some great info being shared here. I ended up using a regular crush sleeve and set the preload at 25inch pounds with new bearings and seal. The Ford manual I had specd it at 17-27 inch pounds. It took some serious grunt with a 5 foot cheater bar to get the right amount of crush, these are much stouter than the GM ones I've played with in the past. I sure like the design though. The next step will be to set up the pattern and backlash. Bob
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