I know this is a Ford Truck site, but I need help with my Mustang and I'm sure this is still the best place to go. I have an 8.8 that I am putting 3:73's in. I should have ordered a crush sleeve eliminator kit days ago and but I didn't so here I am at 11pm on a Saturday night. I have read lots and watched lots of videos. I have questions with torqueing down the pinion nut and achieving proper preload. I have read guys say don't worry about the pinion nut torque just torque it down until you have the proper preload. That doesn't work in my case as I exceed preload well before minimum torque. I'm talking less that 50 ft/lbs.
When I am applying torque, I feel like I'm crushing the bearings, not the crush sleeve because right away i have rotational resistance. My new crush sleeve was/is .510 new. Old one is .440 I feel like the crush sleeve is not fat enough. Yesterday for s&g's, I have extra crush sleeves, so I pounded one out to .520 and it definitely started to crush that one.
The pinion bearings and races are new. They are Ford. I'm pretty sure the races are all the way in but I installed them when the rear end was still in the vehicle. I finally did what I should have originally done and pulled it out of the car. I have another set so with the rear-end out I'm going to put it in the press and press in the new set.
Does this sound like my bearing races aren't seated? I never hear anyone say what the preload is when you are at 100 ft/lbs on the pinion nut. Does it still spin freely at that point? I can't imagine that the preload decreases after the sleeve starts to crush. Maybe that's what I'm not understanding.
Thanks for any help.

 

Maybe my race wasn't completely seated. I would have thought torqueing the pinion nut would have seated them if they weren't but they are for sure now after pressing new ones in last week. New crush sleeves and crush sleeve eliminator kit have arrived and I'm going to install them today. I'll update with what I find out.

 

So the crush sleeve eliminator kit wasn't big enough, as in it needed more shims than what it came with. It's like Ford didn't machine one of the seats for the bearing races completely, leaving about .100 extra. So I made a shim out of another style crush sleeve. Unfortunately I don't have a lathe so had to file it down with air tools and hand files which left it with about .008 runout which I can unfortunately feel in the preload, BUT I was finally able to get over 100 ft/lbs of torque on the nut and was in spec with 25 inch/lbs so I ordered another Yukon crush sleeve eliminator kit. It has arrived and I should be able to get it shimmed exactly to spec. Now I need to find time.