Eastern off road quoted me $1,400.00 for the ring and pinion install and I told them I had the carrier already stripped down. I pretty much told them to go **** themselves and said I could buy a fully built axle for that price!

Yeah, gears are not something to mess up on. Tim's great though and I highly recommend him as well.

I will be installing the gears this weekend, wish me luck!

Good luck let us know how it turns out

I hope you have something to measure back lash I also hope you have some dial calipers and an inch pound, as well as a ft pound torque wrench.


Gears are very doable with the right tools, and patience. Expect them to take a long time especially since this is your first time doing them.

I've done gears before, the dials are for getting you close, in the end you go off of run pattern. from the run pattern you can tell if the pinion depth and blacklash is correct. This is the first time by myself. As for pinion preload, yeah I need a inch pound dial torque wrench to check for pinion drag.

ALl I will say is good luck.. having the right tools make the job easy.. with out them it can be very frustrating.

PLease post up pics of your gear pattern when you are done.

what's going to get me upset is if I get the pinion depth wrong, have to remove the bearing race to re-shim. do I really need to place the shim behind the race or could I just install it behind the oil slinger on the pinion itself, in the end it's doing the same job? Pingpong sounds like words of wisdom lol, I know how frustrating it could be I had to calm the guy down helping me install gears in my buddy's chrysler 9.25. I will also post the pics when done.

Yes you have to put the shims behind the bearing on the pinion. This is where a pinion depth tool and setup bearing come into play. Also the dial calipers as well.


Before you take the old gears out you make caps
Then you measure pinion depth
then press bearing off of old pinion measure the amount of shims, and add .010 this should get you close.. install and measure pinion depth

then press old bearing off of carrier.. messure and use setup bearing on pinion and carrier. Instal and check pattern. Repeat until pattern is good

Also once patern is close time to break out the dial indicator and check for back lash.

But I guess this happens when you have done one or two sets of gears.

Took me 4 tries! I think the pattern looks pretty good, but I had to go by extra carrier bearings. I trashed the old ones and still needed setup bearings. It really wasn't too bad once I had everything I needed. I had to start from scratch due to the carrier being tampered with. I set the Back lash at .005" and pinion drag at 17 inch pounds and no play in pinion at all. I'm going to run the axle like this.

Glad it went well!

thanks man

Hey guys kinda new here, but my AX15 is starting to pop out of first and is kind of hard to go into the others. Anyone know of a good transmission shop around here?