Dana 27 - Warn Premiums, Refresh Bearings, seals and u-joints

lived over in Pickford-south of the Soo for 12 years before I became a troll again

 

Well, tonight I refilled my knuckles with this stuff. I'm not happy with it-IMO it's too thick to keep the upper bearing lubed.
I'm going to add some gear oil to thin it out a little bit.

 

Just my 0.2 worth...nuttin more
The knuckle grease lubes the axle u-joints when in 4wd
Just pack the kingpin bearings with wheel bearing grease as you would your wheel bearings.
Use a bearing packer...maybe too late for you now.
With the king pin bearings packed like wheel bearings, they will live long and prosper.
Think of how many times wheel bearings go round and round in wheel bearing grease.
Think of how little king pin bearings go round and round...

 

Right there with you on this.

 

Thats what I have always done. seemed to work alright for me. If you get the sealed joint and fill that with grease and packed the knuckle bearings, why would you need to run the pudding?

 

I tried 'em in my wheel bearing packer...too small. So I packed them the old fashioned way, by hand.

By the way, don't do what I did last night...Installed the knuckle, spindle, backing plate, packed the wheel bearings, installed the hub and tightened the wheel bearing nuts. Then realized the axle shaft is still laying on the floor! D'OH!

 

Haha! Sounds like we have the same kind of problems in the garage. If I had a nickel for every time I put something and had to take it back apart..... Keep at 'er. You'll have it all back together and be smilin' at your accomplishment.

As for those king pin bearings: I can't imagine they turn all that much compared to wheel bearing. Just several revolutions when you turn the wheel. Not saying they don't require proper lubrication.

 

gonna pull stuff farther apart this weekend. will pull the carrier out.

then I can sandblast with impunity... and repaint and and and and and

My stuff from rock-auto is on the way, but now I need carrier bearings and seals if I pull that out.

On other sides, I found some bling for the diff, a chrome D-27 cover, pretty thick, about 2x thicker than the current cover I have.

made a trip to cardboard freight this afternoon for some cr$$, 4.5" sanding wheels from 40g to 12g; a couple wire wheels and some other cheap detritus I couldn't live without (like a dedicated 25ft hose to my sanding cabinet and some other such semi-disposable items).

Stopped by flaps right next door and bought me a couple tubes of red-grease from Lucas, now I have to find that dang grease squirter somewhere buried in the shed which hasn't seen a zirk since about 1990 or so.

Hey, did anyone else say "ITS FRIDAY!!!"

 

today was spent with sanders and blasters.

I blasted the knuckles and spray bombed them.


I blasted the king-pin caps and shot 'em...



I blasted the axles and then removed the universal...





I hit the case with 40g angle grinder followed by 120g... looks like it cleaned up nice.




I started to pull out the carrier, but that's gonna take a few minutes more than I had... Took a punch and put 3 dots in a triangle on one end of the bearing cap, and on the case, and then did a diamond of dots just the same on the short side...








Gotta look more at the 'pinion twist' removal Don't think I'm man enough to do it with two large screwdrivers.

 

2 screwdrivers or a pry bar and a screwdriver and it will pop right out. I gurntee it.

 

Back in the days when I used to rebuild axles, every one had some sort of stamp in the bearing cap and a corresponding stamp in the houseing, usually on the upper end. One stamp would be vertical and the other would be at 90 Deg. so you knew which side was which and what direction direction was up.
A few years ago the neighbor kid was tearing apart the front axle on his F350. He was good about setting parts out as they came out. As he was putting back together I noticed the stamps were on the wrong side and upside down. I mentioned it to him and he said that it was how they came out so I went back to my chair and worked on my G&T.

 

I'll bring the limes. There were matching marks already, I couldn't trust my 'remember' as to which G was the right G... there was a triangle and some other stuff that might have worked... but simple to make my dots so I know which was which...

 

It almost jumped out in my hands. Big effin screwdriver, like a 2ft and a 3ft crow on the long side, gentle on the pry and gentle in the screwdriver at the same time, pop... Lifted right out, almost like picking up a tin can of dried noodles, you think it'll be heavy, so you almost KO yourself with surprise...

i gotta find find seals now for the inners and it looks like a sleeve behind the inner seal (party of rust on the sleeve behind the seal in the tube).

gotta get the shims and new diff bearings. Not sure why it's a mix of timkin and some 'England' stamped skf bearing.

Not sure urge how the oil slinger on the pinion shaft gets bent, may be the po did it.

i found shims on both sides of the carrier, and two sets of shims on the pinion shaft...

I've never done this, so it will be low and slow to make sure I have it right.

Thanks again.

 

TAKE PICS. take a lot. label it all. The master rebuild kits come with bearings and shims. The slinger you will have to buy separate.

 

Good job on the marking, that's the way to do it.

The sheet metal sleeves behind the seals are guides for the axle to go back through the seal. Try not to mess them up when you pull the seals out. You can use a big socket and a collection of long 1/2 socket extensions to drive the new seals in from the end of the other axle tube.

Measure the shims as you remove them, take notes what thickness went where. The pinion shims under the large pinion bearing race set the pinion depth, that is important to get right. Put the same thickness of shims back in with the new bearing, and you will usually have the correct pinion depth.

The other pinion shims set the preload on the bearings. Check the preload with no pinion seal installed and use the old nut, when you are happy with it, then install the pinion seal and the new nut. If you don't have a new pinion nut (usually comes with the bearing kit) clean up the old one and use some red lock tight.

Don

 

To close out this thread...

DONE! Check the box.

Flanged Rear with new bearings, breaks and a fresh coat of shaken and shoot ... 4.88's and a detroit in the rear. Didn't mess the bearings on the carrier on this one.

DONE! Check the box.

Dana 27 Front
Blasted everything and rinsed with diesel. Degreased, primer and shake-n-shoot black. New bearings all the way thru. M38 hub wiper seals, new u-joints. Kingpins set.

Put @#$@#@ knuckles on wrong sides... disassemble, swap, then reassemble, reset kingpin tension, etc.

Refresh warn premium hubs... what the SFFRZZT did I do when I disassembled and cleaned them... 2 hrs later and the puzzle was fixed...

Had to run lug nuts through the rotary tumbler with stainless pins... didn't get the rust off the threads, but I used some PB Blaster and a tap to fix that up nice...

Need to get some TREs for the prep for the saggy swap.

 

Yep, Focker, you're right...

fresh out of the moldy, mildewy paper. This was the 'clean set'. the tin-foil was pretty thin on this side, but the other side was thick with cosmoline...and mold, mildew and rotten paper. thankfully the wax paper on the parts themselves was in great shape.

read, set, go...


doing the math on my new-old-stock mil-surp parts... 2016 to 1951... 65 years


had some great advice to smooth out the ball to get the gouges out... worked great. paint will leave as the wipers move across it.




These rubber seals and the plates are nice... I looked for a while before I found them.
This end is the wrong end ! disassemble both and put in the right place... grrrr.


So, the paint has a little run in it... some of the spots I've nicked and dinged as well... I might fix that later, I might not. Hub is now the correct side.


Lots of springs, only need two lower retainer springs here...




Pins in the top holes have moved to the bottom holes...


It clicks to lock, it clicks to unlock... I like it. then turn the pinion... feels nice and smooth at the moment... relishing the moment... I imagine 'vroom vroom' while spinning the hub by hand...


This is the 'vertical flanged 44' with moser axles and the detroit locker. Will be interesting to drive it.
That black cover will come off, I have a chrome bling thick cover for it that someone gave my FIL back in the day for his 77 CJ5 - but it dunnit fit.


a little chrome bling for the cover, it's a vintage thick model, so more protection. The 4.88's look good in there.
I need to make some 's' bends now for the brakes.

 

I have a tapered 44, with a powr-loc and 10" brakes and 4.88's (needs brakes) and the original D-27 off the front end too. That's a post-jeep-completed-project for later. Might setup the rear as a trailer axle with brakes for this thing at some point, not sure yet, but in the interim, it's all in the parts-stash... Thinking the d27 front, R&P, axle shafts, etc. might make good to hang onto for spares, same for the powr-loc, but I think the splines are much different on my flanged axle if I fathomed a reasonable guess. Originally, I thought about converting the tapered to flanged... then I slapped some sense into myself for that moment in time and walked away.