Ring & Pinion Guidance

[eschaider]

A Little guidance …

‘Ever since I blew up my ring and pinion and replaced it with new parts I have been experiencing problems. The rear end is an 8.8” Ford. I used an 8.5” Dana 44 ring and pinion to save weight. I made some custom spacers out of Home Depot washers to get the new smaller, lighter, higher performance ring gear closer to the pinion in the Ford housing.

I am now on my fourth Dana 44 R&P. It seems the Dana gears are very sensitive to foreign material from the previously failed ring and pinion getting between the gear teeth. When the older broken teeth get between the newer teeth on the fresh R&P the car exhibits a significant amount of jerking behavior along with a lot of noise, making the car less attractive to drive now.

I have also discovered those gear ratios with a larger pinion gear tooth count last longer. There can be a considerable improvement in drive time because it takes more time to break off all the additional teeth compared to the gear sets with a smaller pinion tooth count.

It seems to me that the Dana gear sets are much too finicky about old broken gear teeth in the differential. If you had to clean out the diff housing each time you break a ring and pinion before reassembling new gears in the rear end this could get very old, very fast.

The silver lining in this whole event is the much-improved acceleration and overall performance of the car with the smaller 8.5” ring gear. The reduction in angular momentum and rotational kinetic energy with the smaller ring gear is immediately noticeable in the seat of your pants. It actually feels really good until those older broken gear teeth start circulating.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to mitigate the noise and jerkiness while driving the car when those old broken teeth get between the teeth on the new ring and pinion. BTW it is additionally aggravating because when it happens in lower gears it has broken teeth in the transmission in second gear and also in fifth gear overdrive — which like the rear end just seems to get worse each time they fail.