hey guys ,ijust installed a new freshly rebuilt axle today at work,powertrax locker,gm 3.42 gears and 26 spline moser axles.the guys who did the work for me said the axle and wheel bearings might be a little tight for awhile ,but when i say tight i mean it`s hard to turn the wheels by hand.how long do any of you guys think it will take for the new bearings to brake in?because i know this is going to put a ton of strain on my tranny until they do.any advise?

 

it's hard to turn by hand? if it is that noticable it is not right

 

yeah they`re pretty tight.but the common consenus seems to me that the bearing s need tme to properly seat themselves i don`t know

 

i've done one or two and would never describe the wheels as "hard to turn". doesn't take a lot of time or effort to pull the cover and recheck backlash and contact pattern.

 

when we set the backlash it was alittle high on the tooth but nothing serious . the contact pattern was good on both the drive and coast sides of the ring gear.do you think it could be the pinion bearing?

 

saying the backlash "was a little high on the tooth" is pretty meaningless. do you have any idea what you're doing or how to check backlash?

 

IMHO I think this is normal. When I got my old rear end, I was able to turn one axle (no wheels) by hand and the other one would turn (limited slip).

I rebuild my rear-end and put everything fresh in there. Went from 3.42 to 4.10's and now I cannot turn the axle like I used to when it was old. It is definitely tighter than before. The manual (either helms or randy's) had a spec for total torque required to turn the pinion nut once everything is in and tightened and with tq-wrench on that nut I was actually on low end of the acceptable spec, so I am fairly confident everything was done right.

If you just did the gears. You should break everything in. There is a full procedure somewhere, but basically only short drives and let things cool because new bearings will heat up more. You have to do this several times. Then once things grind into each other and loosen a little, you have to change oil after 500 miles.

Then again I can't compare that to your's because I don't have wheels on so I don't know how tight that would be since a wheel will give you way more torque than trying to turn the axle with your fingers against the two lug bolts.