Today was our last practal on drivelines and we finished up with the inspection of the differential. The first thing we did was set the preload on the drive pinion to 11.3 inch-lbs so it was at the correct tightness. Then we installed the ring gear assembly and used the two side adjusting nuts to set the backlash to around 0.2mm, this allows for thermal expansion and lubrication between the gears. Once that was done we painted the teeth on the crown gear and rotated it 360degrees so we could see the contact pattern of the teeth, the contact was closer to the toe side of the tooth, but to make it more centred we needed to move the drive pinion away from the crown wheel.
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30/03/2011
Today i took apart a differential from a Mazda 808 vehicle. It was relatively simple, first i removed the end bearing caps which allowed the crown wheel to come out and then unbolted a nut on the flange which holds the drive pinion in the housing. I then used a punch to tap out the shaft which supports the pinion gears, from there i could remove the pinion and side gears from their housing. I then followed my workbook to begin carrying out the inspection, checking the teeth for any cracks,chips,wear , checking the bearings for noise,roughness. The condition of the teeth were good although i found some of the tapered needle roller bearings were rough and damaged which would need to be replaced.
(This is the diff. assembly complete)
(below is the crown wheel/pinion/side gears removed)
(These are all the parts that make up the diff.)
