Chevy 10-Bolt Rearend Upgrades - Get Your Rear In Gear

The torque specs that the instructions call for are first 55 then 60 ft-lbs for the ring gear. Red Loctite is used on these bolts as well.

When installing the carrier and gear, we saved the original shims as a starting point for backlash measurement. Sometimes setting backlash is a trial and error process. In our case the original shims were too tight a fit, so we used the shims supplied in the kit to get the backlash properly set.

Setting the backlash requires that the pinion gear be immobilized while the ring gear is rotated back and forth.

Moving the ring gear towards or away from the pinion gear centerline helps determine the amount of rotation backlash and meshing of the gears. We set the backlash in the rear end to .003-inch, which is on the tighter end of the spectrum.

Once the we believed we had the proper backlash set, we used gear marking compound to check the pattern wear on the teeth of the ring gear. There are about 18 different illustrations in the instruction booklet that deal with acceptable wear patterns. Needless to say, we won't include those in this article. As you can see the gear wear pattern on our ring gear is as close to center as we could get it, which, according to the instructions and Randy's book is acceptable.

After the axles were clipped into place, we sealed up the differential using Grade 8-bolts. That might be overkill on our part, but Harrison insisted.

Finally we used Royal Purple 75w-90 gear oil and filled her up. Follow the direction included in the instruction booklet for the proper breaking procedure of the new ring and pinion