Baystate Jeepers

Figure I would document the rebuild of my D44

Over the weekend I removed the axle, degreased, primed and painted. Since I changed the diff fluid right before the RC trip last fall and put less than 1K miles, the fluid was very clean. Not that I am going to reuse the R&P but wanted to measured BL .008 and took a gear pattern for my records.

Nice clean axle



Coast side


Drive side



New pinion bearing should be in tomorrow...

Yup, axle is still sitting in the same place! Have not been able to get back to it... Arugh

Got a chance to setup the rear ARB locker yesterday. Having the new/old pinion numbers marked makes it a lot easier to setup the gears.

Noticed when I removed shims from the pinion shim stack the driver side / coast side was further apart (drive side was centered and coast side was closer to the toe). Adding shims caused both sides to go further to the Toe side, not the result I was looking for either.

So this is with a SS of .040 and .006 BL

Drive side


Coast side

Couple tips to help things go faster..
Having 2 torque wrenches one set for the bearing cap bolts and the other set to ~55 ft lbs for the pinion nut helps! I noticed that 55 ft lbs will set your preload to 20 inch lbs every time. Also a 2 jaw puller makes removing the yoke a breeze.