Tapered Axle Shim

I'm attempting to put together a D44 Tapered Axle on my 1960 CJ5.

The axle after opening it up was in poor condition and it appears a previous owner at some point had been in it.

One of the issues noticed during disassembly, was there were no shims to be found to set the wheel bearing end play. It felt like there was significant end play in the axles, but I didn't measure it during disassembly.

The open diff (Spider Gears) were not in a condition to be re-used, I setup a new gear set (5.38) with a Power Lok (19 spline) and all new bearings. I'm now trying to re-install the axles.

I've confirmed that the pin in the power lok is present and appears to be in good condition.

I've installed both axles, I setup the driver side flush and installed a bearing retainer plate.



Capped!



I used a punch and a dead blow to drive the passenger side bearing race in as far as I can.

It actually seats below the surface of the axle flange.



I've measured the depth at about 0.017.



So far I've installed the original axles, had this same issue. I removed the axles and inspected them, it appeared that the passenger axle may have been attacked with a grinder at some point, there was no chamfer on the spline ends. I ordered a replacement (Omix) and re-installed. The issues remains.

My next steps are to install a 0.020 shim behind a bearing, which should put the end play into spec, before I go to far down that path, is there something obvious I'm missing?

 

Does your powr-lok have the little button thing inside it that the axles butt up against?

 

That was certainly a thought, but I did visually check that both sides of powerlok had the button visible.

The rear end was a mess when I tore it apart, a lot of play in everything and the rollers literally fell out of the cages when I pulled the pinion. The spiders in the original open carrier had been worn down significantly from all the particles in the oil. (hind sight being 20/20 if I'd suspected so much was wrong in this rear end, I would have been far better off buying one of the many used 5.38s out there and using it to start from)

There was no shims to be found on disassembly and a lot of end play in the axles. My working theory is a previous owner pulled the axles, lost the shims and on reassembly bound up the bearings. The fix was to shorten the axles. One axle seemed to have clear evidence of being shorten, I'm suspecting the last original axle received a similar treatment.

I ended up ordering round shims ID 1-3/8 OD 1-7/8 .020 thickness and mounting one behind wheel bearing on the axle. This shimmed the axle enough that when I put the bearing retainers on I ended up with about .002-.003 of measured end play with no shims. I thought about adding a .020 to both axles and then using the correct shims to get back to the right end play, but I'm happy with the result as is. Hopefully the next time this axle comes apart, its somebody else's problem

I can't imagine effectively shortening the taper end of the axle by .020 of an inch is going to matter, but there may be a future post about how the damn hub now isn't correctly aligned.