Dam Sam....typical Genuine gear! Just joking. The rear V6 Genuine
gears exploded making a terrible noise...Sam was 40 miles from home
and said, "screw it!", and drove all the way home at 20 mph with the 
rear end making shotgun noises and occasional lock-ups. He did make 
it and the above pic shows the old Genuine pinion took some abuse. 
     The plan---to salvage this V6 carrier/case with Lockrite and rebuild
it with a new Genuine 529 gear that Sam had on hand. This carrier  would
then be swapped into the front end. In turn, the rear would see a V6 
carrier with spool with Bobby Long "cryo only" treated Yukon gears. No
pics of the new rear install unfortunately.  



This is the part number for the BIG V6 pinion bearing.... 




part number for the V6 carrier bearings
 



Comparison of the V6 pinion bearing on the left with the "4 cylinder" on right. 




Genuine gear...all the markings to be found on the gears to help ID them. 












Cleaned area well and placed .120" worth of shims BEHIND the big 
bearing cup. This means I need to only put about .123" of shims
at the pinion head as .243" is approximately the total pinion 
shim required when installing "4 cylinder" gears in a V6 3rd member.

Editor's note: I don't do this anymore. There is no strength benefit
to placing less shims behind the pinion. It only adds more math to
the install.  ZUK 1-26-2007




Shim used here was about .121"....the bearing was in good shape and was re-used.
 



I should have bought a lottery ticket as the pattern was as good as
can be expected. Total shim is about .241" for this install. 




Sam! Only 70 ft/lbs. please! 

We cranked the carrier bearings 
TIGHT to minimize ring gear deflection and maximize life....about 8 on the 
backlash....and about 6 in/lb on pinion pre-load. The pinion nut was loctited 
and staked. The V6 crush sleeve seemed to take almost twice the effort to crush 
as the longer 4 cylinder one which is good. 
Let's see if Sam can break this one. ;)


UPDATE on breakage.... 11-05-2006....Sam twisted the front axle splines and grenaded 
the birf on the driver's side 30 spline Long's.....529 front Genuine gears survived.
He did this at the Marathon sponsored by the azundertakers. This happened on Axle 
Alley before the first waterfall in Florence, AZ.

1-13-2007....Sam shatters the front passenger side 30 spline Long cage on Ash Canyon
Trail in Sierra Vista, AZ. The 529 was untouched. He did this in a section called 
Boulder Garden....it used to be called the Rock garden....then the rains came and
washed all the dirt away.

The rear 529 Yukon "cryo only" gears have no issues so far. (1-29-2007)


Sam's rig started life as a 2nd gen Runner V6 5 speed. He now has double cases with
a 4.7 in the rear, 529 Genuines front/Yukons rear, and 38" SX tires. As of this writing,
he is soon upgrading to 39.5" tires. ZUK 1-29-2007



DEC 29, 2012---The above fuzzy cellphone pic was just sent to me from Sam. The front diff is still
functional but the rear diff shown above finally blew.....took about 8 years and 40
inch tires but it did finally go bye-bye.