Since you're doing a lot of detail work on this build, have you considered a GRANT 61037 gm revolution steering wheel?

 

I have not, but that does look nice. I considered buying a brand new oem one, but that grant is cheaper. I'll look into it

 

Decided to go ahead and tear down the axle I built last year. I only had a few thousand miles on it, but had a pretty bad whine to it as well as a decel noise. The backlash was still good at .006 but the pinion pre-load had loosened up to 10in-lbs.







Carrier bearings





Pinion bearings have weird marks on them. Any ideas?



Not sure if I should reuse the gears (4.11) or go with motive 3.90 or 4.10 since I've heard they are very quiet compared to Yukon





4L80 harness came in so I can integrate the extra harness before I complete the wire tuck



Also got a cheap can for the coolant overflow to hide inside the fender

 

The pinion bearing preload being loose would lead to a whine and decel noise. The noise in the gears is all in the setup. Yukon gears are high quality, there shouldn't be a noise if properly set up.

An important thing to keep in mind is that a new pinion seal will add 2-3 in-lb of drag. So if you were barely in the lower end of the PBPL spec then that could be the culprit of it coming loose once the drag from the new seal was reduced after driving. I aim for the upper end of the spec to be safe. I would even be OK being 1 or 2 in-lb above with a new seal.

I would change the bearings since you're in there and they're marked. Looks like some debris might have gotten in there somehow. AxisT6 is our resident gear expert. He has a thread on how to set then up that I followed and how I know about the seal drag. He's super helpful!

 

I had many posts back and for with AxisT6 and he helped me set them up originally, and was a great help. I think this time I am going to do a crush sleeve eliminator kit so I know it's locked in place. Last time the pre-load was like 19in-lbs which was the high end, but I was told it's good because the pinion seal drag. Somehow the thing loosened up, or I did a poor install, I'm not too sure. If I put new bearings on there, could I reuse the gears, or will they always make noise now?

 

That might be a question better answered by Bryan, but they don't seem to be marked much from the previous setup. How do the teeth look? It was difficult to really get a good look. If they're not worn oddly you may be able to reuse them. I would give it a shot. Worst case you have to buy new gears, best case they work and you save yourself some dough to put into your fuel system.

 

I may just do that since it's not my DD, if they don't work I'll just get new ones. Hopefully round 2 of gear install goes better

 

Second time is always easier. Post the pattern and shim stack thickness you end up with.

 

I always target 20-25 inch pounds of pbpl for new bearings and 10-15 inch pounds for used bearings. That said, pbpl is always going to loosen up some from break in on the new bearings, doesn't matter if you use a crush sleeve or a solid spacer.

The solid spacer is to stop pbpl issues caused by deflection of the crush sleeve due to high hp/drag launches etc. The spacer is a little more time consuming to set up on the front end but once it's set you're done and no more crush sleeve worries.

If you can catch a fingernail on the bearing marks, it'd be best to replace them. You can re-use the gear set but generally once they have been used and a wear pattern established, if they made noise they will continue to do so. However, yours don't really appear to be abnormally worn so you might be able to move them around and stop/lessen the noise. Only way to know is to try it though.

Btw, clean *** work and great build!