LU-4 Pinion Gear Races

[JimC]

My races and bearings are in good shape, but neither race is fully seated. Both races lack about 3/32 inch being fully seated. That seems very strange to me. Any idea what might be going on there?

[T. Highway]

Jim,

Can you post a picture so that we can see exactly what you are talking about?

Bert

[JimC]

What I'm trying to say is that the base of the cups is not seated. There is about a 3/32" gap between the bottom of the cups and the seat. That means the cups are floating so that rotating the pinion under load will drive one of the cups home, thereby increasing the pinion end play by roughly an additional 3/32 inch. The cups and cones don't have any rust or wear, so I think maybe someone replaced them without knowing what they were doing. It was certainly one method for reducing the apparent endplay.

Don't have time right now to import the photos into Photoshop and reduce the resolution to make the photo file size small enough to post.

[T. Highway]

Jim,

I looked last night at the winch parts that I have laying around and I think that I'm looking at the same part that you are describing.

This race is flush on the outside of the aluminum housing and had about a .09" gap under the race to the face of the seal. I don't know if this is correct and I don't recall what it looked like when I rebuilt my winch either. I will dig thru the TMs tonight for more information.

Bert

[JimC]

Bert, I haven't had time yet, but I will check to see if that gap is just a stepped recess.
I checked. It is. The races are fully seated with a 0.09" gap. I was making a mountain out of a molehill.