When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Hello, im trying to buy a 9 bolt housing from http://tacreationsusa.com/ but they want me to tear open my rear end to count the number of roller on the inner pinion bearing.
Apparently there were two different types of housings used, one being a bit more rare than the other. I can't take apart my rear right now, but I doubt I have the lesser used model, and I cant really find any other information about it.
They say its not year or gear ratio dependent, so the only way to find out is to open it. I cant do that at the moment, and will be time crunched to swap out the rear as it is. So I need this thing asap.
I wanted to see how many people actually had this "rare" model and if someone could give me the common roller count.
As far as I know there is only one bearing size for the 9 bolt for the inner pinion bearing. I think they are blowing smoke up your a ss or they don't know what they are talking about.
Unless you get known mileage, I would replace all the seals at the very least. That requires new axle bearings and a crush sleeve for the three seals. Replacing the other bearings isn't a bad idea, but you can inspect them and see whether they require changing before throwing money at it.
Personally I would change all the bearings and seals so you know they are new instead of unknown. It's not a lot of money, but it takes time to change them, or more money if you just have someone else change them
I'm pretty sure there is in fact more than one head bearing for those, but I also think it's an early/late kind of thing, and these cars are all early. GTOs and such are late. I could easily be wrong though.
Not sure what difference the housing you have now, matters in terms of the housing you want to buy; but what do I know.
Axle seals are a major issue with parts sourcing for those. There's any number of posts on here about one being N/A, another doesn't fit right, etc. etc. etc.
If it was mine I'd change every bearing and seal in it. Can't imagine how it would be a good idea to put used ANYTHING, least of all bearings, into a different housing, anyway; that makes no sense at all to even consider. Besides, there's no telling when all of those things are going to just disappear from the face of the Earth forever, and it would SUCK to have some one of those things to fail later on, and it no longer be available.
The two black axle seals are wrong, but that is what Timken says fits. They WILL work, but they aren't the correct seal. There is already another post for 9 bolt info. search for my name and you'll find the Yukon part numbers for the correct seal, along with the SKF numbers
I've been to Ratech's factory, in the Cincinnati area, and poked around their shelves more than once with their (female) manager to find what I needed ATM. BTW she was TOUGH: kind of a biker chick, but not in any kind of a bad way; more like, her kids were gonna grow up to be football players. I was quite pleased. I would not hesitate, in the sense of "prefer to know what I'm getting", to do business with them, as I wandered around among their punch presses and whatnot.
Bearings are a different story. Used to work at a place that was a distributor of them for electric motors. BIG electric motors. We tended to prefer the Japanese brands at that time; SKF, NTN, those brands. Of course this was MANY decades ago. The reason of course was, Japanese, German, Polish, Korean, British, even Russian, factories were bombed to SHRAPNEL between 1940 and 1955; many former industrial powerhouses were OBLITERATED; but American factories weren't. As time when on, all those other places got nice shiny brand-new plants built with the latest technology. Here, nothing had to be renewed. We rested on our laurels for DECADES. So we saw stuff like the tires from US factories that were A TOTAL JOKE next to Michelin (French) or Bridgestone (Japanese) products... anybody here old enough to remember the Firestone 500 scandal? Bearings were one of those things that were strategically annihilated during those wars, so all those other place have NEW factories, where WE DON'T. Go do some travel outside the US, you'll see EXACTLY what I mean. Lose the "we're the best" snobbishness and realize that EVERYBODY on the planet is equally smart and we that ALWAYS have to be on our best game in more than just speeches and bombast, or they're gonna out-compete us if we don't BUST OUR *** instead of the complacent "oh we're American we deserve to have all this".
I certainly have no qualms about getting parts made elsewhere, my main focus is quality. I don't want to touch this thing again (rear) for a long while, so I just want to make sure i'm covered.
Being in Michigan, you could easily enough drive down to Ratech yourself and see what there is to see. Talk to the people there, look around, decide if that's the way you want to go.
My 86 has the (apparently more rare) small pinion bearing. Found this out after getting it apart.
It could be, rather than an early/late thing, a casting/machining manufacturing decision. Idk and it's pure speculation, but sometimes you find that a casting will not accommodate machining to a specific dimension due to shifting or shrinkage encountered in the casting process.
How much would I realistically have to disassemble to get to this bearing? I'd like to get the housing this week, but I'd guess the headache would be bigger if the housing didn't accommodate my gears.
Talk to the people there, look around, decide if that's the way you want to go. 
