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Old 07-01-2005, 11:56 AM
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aerocolorado
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You can probably manage this yourself. You don't need a 200 fl/lb torque wrench, in fact, you need a small inch/lb wrench to determine the pinion bearing pre-load. You will have to fabricate a simple drilled bar to hold the pinion flange during removal/installation and you will need the longest 1/2 breaker bar you can find -24 inches works fine. In a nutshell, remove the companion flange, pry out the old seal, replace with new and retorque the pinion nut SLOWLY, SLOWLY, SLOWLY until you reach the specified pinion bearing pre-load. You tighten then test the turning resistance with the inch/lb torque wrench. CAUTION! Don't go by the bench test values - those are for a dissembled unit - i.e. no axles/wheels/etc included. There is a separate value for the on-the-vehicle test. I don't have my manuals with me as I write this, but I seem to recall the on-the-vehicle number was somewhere around 25-30 in/lbs of torque as compared to 10-15 in/lb for the bench test. It is easy to overshoot the mark when you are grunting away with that big breaker bar. It will seem like forever to get to 20 in/lb then the next pull sends it way over the mark.

There is a lot of hoop-te-do made about that crush washer when in fact, most shops just reuse the old one. When I rebuilt mine, I measured the new crush washer against the old and found something like 0.003 difference - so they really do not "crush" down as the name implies. It is merely a heavy duty spacer between the the pinion nut and bearing. Neither of the local Ford dealer parts counter even had one in stock. They were a special order item which seems rather odd for this common repair procedure. (Draw your own conclusions on this.)