Brian's 2008 Taco front 8" clam gets Nitro 4.56 gears
(50 BIG pics loading)
DEC 1 2017

Brian is keeping the front open mode for now. Just a 4.56 Nitro ring/pinion with new Koyo bearings and a solid collar upgrade.
Parts are unboxed and layed out.
This stub shaft does not pry out very easy at all. You could tap it out from the other side.....or do it the way I'm going to do it here.
Whizz off the 10 bolts that secure the lid.
I use a brass drift and hammer to separate the cases.
Looking in the bowl....still have a little gear oil that did not drain out.
Now to remove the stub axle.....
....just turn it over and tap a chisel between the cross pin and axle end. It pops right out.
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Easy :)
Red FIPG and excess gear oils are cleaned off.
Pinion end is disassembled. The "old" flange is in near perfect condition.
Push the pinion out.
Back over to the open carrier....the new 456 Nitro is checked and no burrs are found.
Blue Loctite and 71 ft/lb is the FSM spec.
The old carrier bearings were removed and the new ones tapped in place.
.077" shim with the new pinion bearing are now pressed in place.
The "bowl" now gets new races....the small outer race is tapped in place.
The large inner race requires a certain finesse to get it to seat down. There is a fancy Toyota tool for this but I used my common sense tool...
This little 99 cent bubble allowed me to tap down the race evenly. It's important to use the right kind of hammer for the limited space involved.
It has to be a low profile heavy hammer like this one. The standard claw hammer does not allow a decent swinging force.
Bada bing bada boom. Done..... 100% seated.
456 pinion has been mounted for pre-test setup. The old races are left undisturbed for the moment.
The heavy carrier is picked up and lowered in place.
This is very un-scientific....but I feel no backlash at all. I need to feel about .010" backlash before anything can happen. That means the washer plate behind the used carrier bearing race has to be at least .010" thicker....probably more.
Turn the bowl upside down and tap out the washer plate.
Tap tap. Skipped a few pics but replaced the oem washer plate(.068") in the bowl with .085" and that did the trick.
The 1st paint check shows the drive side as being too deep with the .077" pinion shim. Didn't use alot of pressure so the paints are not that hi-quality here....
Coast.
Pinion paints....
Bad angles and hard to tell.....
Teardown and just a little bit thinner pinion shim.....only 2.5 thou thinner.
This time I was more careful about using good pressure and even swipes. Drive side....very nice depth and a slight favoring to the heel.
Coast look wonderful.
Drive ...reverse painted.
Coast....reverse painted.
Comet tail looks good.
Now is the time to fine tune both the backlash and the carrier bearing preloading. Using the lever style indicator is a little awkwards but it has to be done.
Talk about luck....the solid collar measured 1.392" and the 1st shim I used was .027" and it hit the nail on the head. No further adjustment needed.
This Nitro kit had the genuine oem NOK pinion seal. This is the preferred seal.
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Gradual tapdown.
Recessed the seal exactly .170" per the fsm. Oil is applied to the seal surface and the flange can now be installed.
Aluminum anti-seize and kept tightening the nut until I measured a smooth 10 in/lb of pinion bearing preload.
#1281 FIPG on the lid lip......
37 ft/lb on the 10 lid bolts per the fsm.
The driverside axle stub seal is a new genuine NOK seal also(BH5320F). That other seal shown in the pic is the passenger side seal at the end of the steel extensiion tube.
Final notes.