My uncle is having a set of gears installed in his 94 Z28. The car originally came with a 2.73 gear, and he moved up to a 3.42. The carrier that was in the car was trashed so a brand new eaton unit was ordered. The unit is designed for 3.23 and up gears so the spacer for the 2.73 type carrier was no longer needed. The gears are Motive 3.42s and the bearing kit was made by Ratech. The problem is the pinion bearing. He has put 3 pinion bearings in it and they all have crushed under pressure. He could drive it for maybe 100 yards and it would just trash the bearing. Whats the problem? The guy doing the work has never seen anything like it before. He is a gm master certified tech and has done at least 10 gear installs on 93-02 f bodies. Everything is new in the rear end except for the axles themselves. If a wrong crush sleeve was packaged with the install kit, could this cause it? What about pinion depth? We don't know what to do. Please help. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

are you replacing the bearing races in the housing at the same time??,

something has to be not pulling together all the way when he is setting the pinion bearing pre-load

i have seen others have this problem if the races and dont get driven into the housing far enough

what is he setting the pinion pre-load at??