Axle swap

[wayno]

A 1/16th inch is not that uncommon, I have found a lot of gear sets with a 1/16th inch play, but I have found some with a 1/4 inch play also that turned out to be fine, the LSD I found is one of them, it is tight(1/16th inch play/backlash when side gears are not involved), but I also have found gear sets with a 1/4" play in the pinion flange that were wore out/toast, it was all about spending the least amount of time removing good gear sets to sell back then, now the wrecking yards want too much for their scrap, especially plastic parts.

Edited November 2, 2019 by wayno

[datzenmike]

wayno my '69 Charger had a bad clunk. When I took it out, the pinion pin had oval-ed the hole from back and forth on and off the gas and the pin had split the metal and was just short of coming right out of the housing. Yeah the driveshaft yoke had a good 1/4 turn back and forth.

[wayno]

Remember this C200 issue I had, this had so much play my drive line clanged like a bell when I started out in first gear, it had a bunch of play in the pinion flange.

 

 

The cross shaft broke

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Somebody was doing some clutch dump burnouts! That is one of the only reasons a cross shaft will break.

 

 

[datzenmike]

One tire fires are also bad. Both pinion gears are spinning around the stationery tire side gear at twice the speed of the spinning tire and transmitting all the load. True they transmit all the load normally but only half on each and they are stationery relative to each other except when making a turn.

[wayno]

Or maybe I was hauling a trailer and massive amounts of weight(firewood, wet moss from roofs, ect.) and the truck was a bitch to get rolling sometimes, especially on a uphill grades when at a stop light, back then I had an L20b in my work truck and getting 7000+lbs rolling was difficult sometimes, I went thru a few dogleg 5spds also early on, I actually went thru several H190 gear sets also before converting over to the C200 dually axle, Datsun/Nissan never made these axles to do what I put them thru, I have slowed down over the last 5 years and have only had issues with the 71B 5spd transmissions and L block starters.

Another thing I always had issues with is the power steering on the 521 frame/chassis, I used the truck for hauling massive amounts of weight, the 521 frame/chassis could not hold up to the side pressures of the power steering, but that all changed when I put my work truck cab on a 1986 Nissan 720 frame/chassis, but again I did this after I started slowing down, at the same time I made the 521 work truck a dump truck.

 

This is what the power steering gear did to my 521 frame/chassis, I had to repair this 4 or 5 times over the 12 years I had power steering on the 521 frame/chassis.

 

It's now a dump truck, 20 years too late, the truck weighs 3900lbs in this photo.

 

Remember the loads of firewood I have hauled, I have done this over a hundred times with firewood, thousands of times with water saturated pressure washing roof debris, I remember having to shovel out more than a ton of debris 3 times a week for years and years.

 

Two tons

 

Imagine this small load filling the whole bed up to the top of the cab, I have done this hundreds if not thousands of times.

 

Buy the time I got the truck loaded with roofing and to the dump I rolled over the scales at 7200lbs, the truck weighed 3400lbs at the time.

 

I have put this truck thru more than anyone could ask and considering what I have done to it it has held up pretty good, yes it has had to be repaired several times but looking at the big picture in this axle swap thread these Datsun/Nissan axles I have been using held up pretty good, not once has any of my axle bearings given up which is a freaking miracle.