I had found that when pulling the rear end the pinion wobbled at the drive shaft. What an unexpected suprise! Pulling the cover reveled a case half filled with water, a ring gear with .035 endplay at the bearings (there should be none) and a pinion that moved like a spoon in soup. The bearings were shot, the gears were pitted, and the carrier bearing had spun and worn .010 off what is meant to be a press fit. I nearly knocked the car off jackstands trying to remove the axles and to make matters worst later the hubs wouldn't come off either.

I tried for days to get those hubs off. Finally I bolted the hub/axle to a steel rim, suspended it between two saw horses put a thick steel plate over the backed-off nut, applied heat and oil and it still took about 15 overhead, full force whacks from a 10 pound sledge hammer before they finally came loose. I commented on the Tiger list that I would have chained the rearend to a tree stump and thrown it over a cliff to get those hubs off. But, knowing my good fortunes the stump would have ripped loose, I would have lost the rearend and the Save the Trees people would have had me fined for ruining a perfectly good tree stump!

Attempts to economically purchase the 2:88 gears and carrier never seemed to pan out. Finally Herb Mosley (Tiger Tales Tech Editor) hooked me up with Dale Akuszewski. A 4 hour round trip to San Bernardino gave me a used set of gears and carrier for $75. I wound up creating my own pinion depth gage. This was put together from a depth mic my stepfather left me and a gage block with holes in the center that I had made when I was a machine shop student at L.A. Trade Tech over twenty years ago. The block sat on the bearing cap mount and the block thickness was subtracted from the reading to measure the pinion depth.

Never throw anything out. I gave the block to my Step-father years
ago and when he passed on got I it back (and the depth mic too)

I also took some scrap steel plate and built a case spreader using a coil spring compressor in reverse fashion.