D27 needs a good dentist

A few days ago, I had the Jeep in front of the house on the street and put it in low range to do a "slow drags" with a friend's Scout to see who had a lower crawl ratio. After I eased the clutch out after shifting into low range, I heard what sounded like a bad bearing in the t-case. So I got out of the Jeep while it idled along and pinpointed the noise to the front diff. Anyway, I took the cover off this afternoon and found that the ring gear had a bunch of teeth broken off and laying in the bottom of the diff. I was suprised because I've never been hard on the Jeep at any time. I baby it so much it's almost sickening. I also noticed that the diff cover had been patched up once before like something had shot through it maybe. It's weird because the week before, I took the Jeep in the hills and drove around some easy dirt roads and had it in low range for most of the day and heard no such noises. Seems like it happened all of a sudden. One last thing, the Jeep never had manual hubs on it until about '97. That's when we got it and the PO had just put on new Warns. So, the front end had been spinning along for about 127,000 miles if that's any indication why the teeth failed. Or is it just abuse from years ago? Anyway, looks like now's a good time to finally go to 4.88's.

 

Bob, really hard to say, sorry to hear about the damage.
You can ruin even new gears instantly without much trouble (not saying you did), age probably not a factor here
If you have never repaired it, could be fault of PO for improper set-up
lets blame it on the previous owner

 

i blame the scout... probably picked a fight when you weren't looking and sucker-punched em.

 

You gotta watch those Scouts. Can't turn your back on them for a minute.

Sounds good to me Jim.

Looks like I'm probably going to go all out now. 4.88's, a rear locker, possibly a Powr-Lok in the front, and a FF setup for the rear. I'll be doing some serious ciphering this week. Anyone have any preferences on suppliers for ring and pinions?

 

Bob,
Got any teenage sons who might have taken the Jeep out for a little unauthorized wheelin in the middle of the night? I can't imagine breaking the teeth off the ring gear and not hearing it go. Try Randy's Ring and Pinion for gears.