I have a 2000 f150 that I just bought that makes a single clunk noise when you go from drive to reverse or reverse to drive. I checked the u joints and they are fine, so I pulled the rearend cover and saw that I had all kinds of play in the spider gears so I replaced them. That didnt help. So next I thought maybe the pinion bearing was bad so I pulled it apart again to see if it was damaged and it was fine. So I put it back together and checked the backlash, it had about .019 which is out of spec. I shimmed it and reassemble and got my backlash to .010 which should be within spec. At this point every thing was nice and tight when I turned the pinion flange. So I reinstalled the axles and spider gears and now I have play in the pinion flange again. Its not in and out its circular. Im guessing it has about 1/4 inch of slop in it. Do they make differnt thickness of the shims for the spidergears? Any help would be great. Thanks

 

Did you replace the crush washer for the pinion ?

 

Yes I put in a brand new one

 

as far as the shims for the spider gears go, do you have any of your old shims or the metal discs from your old spider gear set ? if so you could stack them and hopefully get less play.

 

U Joint would be my quess.

 

thats what my first thought was too but he said his u-joints were fine

 

I checked the u joints & they are good, I threw out the old spider gear shims. I have look on youtube and see the spider gear slop on several videos. I dont know Im at a loss what it could be

 

well if worse comes to worst maybe someone on here still has their spider gears and shims that installed a locker that can help ya out. sry i couldnt be any more help

 

Thanks

 

mine does the same thing every now and then, kind of annoying :/