Alright I guess I'll get back to it.
I ordered all new seals and bearings for the rear end through Ray at Malloy Mazda. He's a great guy...hard on the check book though.
There are 3 different ways you can go about working on the rear end.
1) Take everything apart, do what you want to do inside, replace nothing and put it back together. Along with this, you have to pray to baby jesus that your bearing preload is still correct.
2) Same as #1, but you replace the crush sleeve and reset your pinion torque. This insures that your bearing preload is correct and you won't burn out the rear end. Much better than #1.
3) If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, replace everything.
I figured #3 was the best choice. I hardly have extra money lying around, but the rear end is something I hope to never have to service again. I also want the mazda rear end to live as long as possible. I don't want it to have any excuse to explode on me.
So anyways, here is the reassembly of the FD rear end with a turbo 2 clutch pack differential.
I'm starting out with everything cleaned up and ready to go. The old bearings have been pressed or pulled off, and the old bearing races and seals have been tapped out. Clean slate.
The pinion bearing on this thing is MASSIVE.
A press made everything much easier. It has been a very good investment for this project. Between the bushings, the rear end, and all the other random jobs its been very worthwhile. The press itself is a POS, but its much better than nothing.
Here the pinion, new bearing, and spacer are all lined up. The spacer only goes on one direction. You can do some damage if you press it on the wrong way. My dad has a massive collection of old bearing races. If you have a press it is a great idea to cut the race out and hold onto them. They are excellent shoving tools.
Once again, press to the rescue.
Here is the clean housing with the inner pinion race tapped in. I used a small hammer and a brass drift to get it in. Be careful getting it started though. If it starts in crooked it can be a serious pita.
The next series of pictures is how you install the pinion into the housing. Don't forget the new crush sleeve!
Put the new outer pinion race in the same way as before.
The bearing is a press fit onto the pinion. You have to drive it on. I didn't take pictures, but another stack of old bearing races made it pretty easy to drive on.
This is the outer oil seal for the pinion. Just gently tap it in. Again, be careful with getting this one crooked. Its much more fragile than the bearing races.
My dad likes to put silicone on the splines of the companion flange. If you get it down into the splines themselves it will keep oil from seeping up and even getting to the oil seal.
Now comes the fun part! You need some way to put a BFbar on the companion flange, and a BFwrench on the nut. I forget what the service manual said for the torque of the nut...but it was pretty comical. I think it was something like 120-200 ft lb. This picture was before it got tight.
What you're doing is compressing the new crush sleeve. It needed .060 inch crush based on comparing it to the old sleeve. You have to be extremely careful when doing this. The amount of crush you put on the sleeve is what sets the preload on the bearings. Too much crush and there is too much drag. You will burn up your brand new bearings. There is no way to undo if you go too far...time for a new oil seal and crush sleeve!
The drag is measured in inch pounds. The service manual calls for something like 11-15 inch pounds. Once you feel that the up and down play is being taken up in the pinion, you need to start measuring the drag frequently. For me, the drag was 2.5 inch pounds every time I measured it. We were going in 1/8 turn increments at the bottom. One more 1/8 turn and it jumped from 2.5 to 15 inch pounds...1/8 turn...
It was an oh $@!# moment, but it turned out to be perfect. Can't argue with perfect
Next up is installing the carrier, measuring backlash, and bolting it all up. Stay tuned for when my enthusiasm returns
