I broke a brand new craftsman 1/2" breaker bar and still have pinion bearing play and no bearing preload...

what now???

 

Buy a torque wrench and see how much torque is there. If you go above the torque and still dont have any preload, you need a new crush sleeve.

 

At $19.00 a pop and another day and a half wait I said screw that idea of throwing away the hard crushing sleeve. I was gonna torque the crap out of it with an impact socket, a 4' pipe and pipe wrench but thanks to a tip from Zuk and some anti-seize I was able to get the crush sleeve to settle down nicely.

I put some anti-seize on the lower 2/3 of the pinion shaft threads and after I got the nut torqued down 2/3 onto the shaft I coated the remaining exposed threads inside of the nut with red lock-tight. It now required a manageable 225 ft lbs.(+ or -) to reach the proper bearing preload.


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For the next time, you should consider getting a solid pinion spacer from MarlinCrawler.com. It won't loosen after a while like a crush sleeve will.

 

^ thats what i had put in mine when i had my diff rebuilt and lockright installed.

The guy said the spacer was a pain in the arse, and he had to take crap apart and put togeter with new shims to get the proper pattern. I guess, im not familiar with too much differential lingo! haha