i installed these gears almost a week ago into my 10 bolt w/ all new bearings and seals...the car had a 9-bolt in it with a beat posi n 323 gears. This car made 360hp and just under 400ft lbs of torque on the dyno with the nine bolt. i launched the car numerous times with drag radials at about 3200-3400rpms and i never heard a noise out of the nine bolt...but since i had the ten bolt and parts were readily available i swapped that in with the new gears...i checked pinion depth and installed the correct shim exactly to spec on the face of the pinion, then installed the carrier shims, after 5 tries i finally got .010 backlash, finally checked pattern and it looked perfect.

initially the gears made very little noise, just a light hum at about 50mph but went away with more speed....after the break in time..i have beaten on it a little bit on the street and it seems to be getting louder above 40mph under part throttle accelaration but not under coast

any suggestions?? or advice ??

 

i have come to the conclusion that 10 bolts are junk. I have put 4 sets of gears in my 02 TA WS6, It seems as if each time i go to the track, that I end up needing new gears. I can't get a 10 bolt to handle it. The 9bolt in my friends IROC which has just as much power as my TA, the 9 bolt never complains, not even after a 5k clutch drop which the car actually hooked from.

 

.010 is a little more than i like for back lash, but not really too much. if you'd sure it's set up to spec and the break in was done correctly i'd start to wonder how straight the houseing is or if it's deflecting under load, thats why you weld the tubes and run a braced cover. other thing i might suspect is you put the bearings in dry and hurt one before it got oil to it. guess the other thing i'd suspect is you didn't set preload on the pinion, seems lot of people don't have the right torque wrench for that and guess at it.

 

i welded the axles to the housing before i did the gear installation. but i didnt pick up one of those aluminum girdles yet. i really didnt wanna put too much money into this rear cus im planning on buying a 12 bolt next spring. i was hoping this rear would last a little while

i doubt any bearings got screwed up from being run dry, because for a week this thing was quite. and i did set the pinion preload to 24-25 inch pounds turning resistance.