I'm having a tough time getting the right tooth pattern without having excessive pinion or carrier shims installed. I have a full size bronco with 8.8 axle and 4.56 gears. The gears I'm reusing after my limited slip case cracked and disintegrated throwing metal all over the inside of the axle. After a thorough cleaning and full rebuild of bearings and seals and new limited slip, I determined the ring & pinion were not damaged so I'm reusing them.

After re-installing the original .033 pinion shim in the pinion and verifying backlash is between .008-.012, the tooth pattern was WAY off! On the drive side of the tooth the pattern was high up on the toe and the coast side was toward the heel.

The ring gear was machined using face milling technique. So according to charts I've seen online, I need less pinion shim and I kept doing that in increments of .005 but it got worse not better. So I went with a thicker shim instead and stopped at .050 pinion shim and it did get slightly better but now I increased backlash to .029 with the .050 pinion shim and the pattern I have now is very close to where it should be and the best I've seen on both sides of the tooth, which is right in the middle!

I'm happy with the pattern I got, but I wanted to ask you guys if using this much shim on both the pinion & carrier is okay and if I can finish up my rebuild and get the bronco back on the road.