I am hopping you guys can help me with figuring out if this is a good gear pattern on my Dana 60.

Pinion shim is .043
backlash is .09
preload is 10 in lbs

 

I hope you mean .009 for the backlash (vice the .09 you wrote above).

The pattern doesn’t look terrible, but it does seem like the ring gear is a little far away ( very thin paint line on the crown edge) , but if the backlash is in spec (again , just assuming the .09 is a typo), then there isn’t a lot you can do about it.

Try thinning the paint markings compound with a little gear oil and running a pattern again while putting some resistance in the ring gear (pressing on it real hard with a gloved hand normally works).

How does the coast side look compared to the drive side? I’ve found that on some re-gears , especially if using a really low ratio like a 5:13 or something, you can never really get both the drive a coast side to both pattern like you want, with those you kinda got split the difference and get both into “acceptable”, even if that means one is about to fall off the toe side while the other is about to fall off the heel side.
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Yes it is a typo the back lash is .009 not .09. I will try rerunning the pattern later today and post pics. These are 3.73s from 4.88 from my f450 had to change the carrier for the 3.73s. I can try to make the backlash closure to .006 that may bring it in a little.

 

Found that the carrier wasn’t all the way in the housing. Rechecked backlash it’s .007. My thought is that I need to take a thousands or two.



these where a .041 pinion shim I tried at one point but the backlash was .004 and preload was 20.

 

Looking at the pictures looks like the .041 shim has a better pattern so that may be the sweet spot but thinking of trying .042 to check that pattern out.