Can anyone tell me what the solution to this is... I am rebuilding the 9.75" diff on my F150 and I can't get the pinion yoke seated all the way down the splines. The photos with everything assembled off the truck are with the old crush sleeve in place-- you can see a small gap between the oil slinger and the outer bearing or the end of the yoke. When tightening the pinion nut on the truck, you can feel that slop still there. I can't get it to budge any further, both in the 600lb press or on the truck using a long *** breaker bar-- setting the pinion preload is out of the question with a gap still present. Can this be taken to a machine shop or something to get them to mate properly again? I bought a new ring/pinion gear as a backup but really didn't want to have to set up the new gears from scratch. Can't see anything wrong with the yoke or pinion splines. Index-marked the pinion and yoke before removal. Used some propane torch heat while removing the pinion. Kind of stumped why this is a problem.

edit- shortened the post to hopefully get some answers.

 

bump... anyone able to weigh in on this?

As a side question, my new ring & pinion gears I ordered from Ford came with a white pinion nut (BL3Z4209G, https://parts.ford.com/shop/en/us/di...tionId:4227472). The original nut and all the other nuts I ordered are all blue (HL3Z4320A). These are all off fordparts.com using my VIN#. I know you aren't supposed to mix and match pinion nut colors... but not sure how a white and blue are different, or why I got a white nut this time. Of course no one at fordparts.com or my local dealer parts dept can tell me what the difference is or why they are not the same parts as when you order them without a complete kit.

The kit with the crush sleeve and pinion nut together off the website refers to a 5.4L engine and has the white nut (BL1Z4320A)....and my truck is a raptor 3.5L ecoboost. So I am suspecting this is an error on their end that some of the parts link to the wrong model. I was going to err on the side of using the crush sleeve and pinion nut I got separately from the website using their exact part numbers, and discard the ones in the kit.

 

Once couldn’t get a new crush washer to crush with way too much torque on the pinion nut.

Gave up, made my own bushing from oillite. Slowly cut it down in a lathe until achieving proper break away torque. Not so easy to do without machine tools.

IIRC that was a 1976 F110 Short bed 4x4, (F100 with optional heavier rated rear axle).

 

My dad suggested adding a spacer as a workaround but I want to fix it right. I bought a new ring and pinion but would prefer not to set up new gears. I was gonna try checking the diameters of the splines on both pinion and yoke all the way around to make sure I have them mated up properly if they've somehow got some oval warp to them (maybe I misaligned it) then freezing the pinion in my deep freezer and attempting install one more time, and then if that didn't work take it to a machine shop and see if they can diagnose/fix the splines so it will slide on all the way. The backup plan being new gears- but I can't find the carrier preload spec for the whole assembly (for shimming the carrier) although I guess I can just ensure my total shim thickness is the same as it was when I started.

 

Have you measured the height of the new collapsible spacer and compared it to the height of the old collapsible spacer. Seems to me the old spacer in its collapsed condition would be shorter. Understand you may still have an issue but that comparison might shed some light on the problem.

 

You can visually see the new vs old spacer is going to be about a half inch difference, but these pictures are done with the used spacer for purposes of seeing that everything should be flush to know the yoke is sliding on all the way. I know you don't re-use collapsible spacers but I know people DO reuse them and just try to tighten it down a bit more-- so it stands to reason everything should at very least make contact. When I had it in the diff assembling it, I couldn't get the slop out.