A buddy of mine e-mailed me yesterday, said he blew up the carrier in his YJ (D35) :nuke: and wanted to know if I could help him fix it since I set up the ring and pinions in my XJ. I started thinking about it and do we really need to re-set pinion depth and preload, backlash and carrier bearing preload with a new carrier? :confused:I thought you only needed to do that with a new ring and pinion. His gears are fine, he just needs a new carrier. I was just going to set it all up again, but it is his daily driver so he needs it fixed ASAP.

From what I understand you should reset everything since the new carrier will have new bearings and could be off a thousandth or two at the least. Bearings are not that consistant.

If that's the case, we can probably still use the old bearings. I'm just looking for the easiest solution. I don't care about the R&P in mine, it's only a trail rig and sees maybe 1K miles a year. But I'm a little worried about a daily driver.

All you need to re-set is the backlash, and check the pattern

If nothing else pay attention to the shims on the old press the old bearings and run the pattern. Not too bum you out but nothing ever seems to go smooth like that. If the pattern looks good run it. What I want to know is how did he blow the carrier? Are you holding back carnage? Does he wheel it? Might be an excellent chance to lock the rear with a stronger carrier seeing as how he blew his last one. Just an idea:D

You shouldn't have to worry about the pinion depth, as long as you are not removing the pinion.
Just worry about the backlash & contact patch.
What I generally do is pull the bearings, measure the shims, use a set-up set of bearings (depending on the axle make) and go from there. What happens is the carrier can be a couple of thousandths off from the factory.

Carriers vary, housings vary, bearings vary, gears vary, you need to re-set the gears, but you may get lucky and the old shim setup may be spot-on, once in a while it happens, but never if you're in a hurry, it's a good starting point anyway. You could check the runout on the blown carrier, mark the ring gear at the farthest point out, and check the new carrier, install the ring with the marked point at the farthest runout on the new carrier, that would help with consistant patterns, then start your shiming and pressing and smashing your fingers and checking and shiming and pressing...

on a POS d35, the shims go on the outside of the carrier bearings...hence no press, pull, press, pull. You could make a dozen shim changes in the time it would take to measure all that crap on the old carrier. Stick it in there how it came out, measure backlash and set the pattern.

Hmm.... never bothered putting anything in my old Dana 35 but a welding rod, I was just thinking Dana 44, if the external shims thing is correct, then yeah, super easy, why bother asking, just do it.

:confused: WTF Why screw around with replacing the carrier:question:

Just weld the original back together;) No weaker than factory D35C:flipoff2: And no setup required.:p