Back axle pinion shaft conundrum

[Stuart Giles]

Hi Stuart, is there any problem with replacing the ball bearing next to the pinion with a roller bearing.
The ball bearing in that location always seemed to me to be a candidate for improvement.
Rgds Gene

When I rebuild axles that have the ball race, I always fit the roller race instead as it's far more rigid than a deep groove ball race. You will need the get or make a roller race distance piece as it will be wider by the difference in the two bearings width. If you are using a 'ball race' style CW & P set you'll also need to make or get made a 1 1/8"  diameter 1" bore spacer as the roller race has bigger bore than the ball race. I make this a light press fit in the bearing but there's no reason why it couldn't be Loctited onto the pinion. The other thing I do is, as per the factory roller race rear axles, I drill the banjo or 'D' axle case to take a 1/4" diameter peg that prevents the outer track of the roller race walking down towards the crownwheel. This does look totally unnecessary to me but it's only 15 minutes work.

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The pinion shaft is 22 3/16" total length. So...unless I have a torque tube that is longer than it should be (is that possible?), it is all correct, and I should probably just tighten everything down and stop worrying. Fair conclusion?

Many thanks!

Geoffrey

I wouldn't want tighten up the pinion flange unless I was confident that it was going up the taper OK. Haven't got to my stock of CW & Ps yet to measure the OA length, but a quick measure of an accessable axle here shows that the overall protusion of the pinion from the big ball end of the torque tube in an assembled axle is 1 5/16"

One other thing, have you checked the width of the pinion bearing at the top of the torque tube. From memory, this is an LJ 7/8 ball race.