Quaife installation

Hi all.

Following my last post and after lots of head scratching I have ordered and received  Quaife's for the front and rear. I am however going around in circles trying to find an installer. Quaife tell me go to Jimnybits , Jimnybits say they cant help with installation or recommendations. Helpful replies like any "gearbox reconditioner can do it" , have turned out to be they may be able to do it but not willing to do so when Ive asked ( or I'm still waiting for promised reply )

Has anyone on here actually had a quaife installed by someone that they can recommend ? I'm happy to travel within reason to have a trusted installer (im in the North west). A  jimny mechanic offered to take the diff out so that I could take it to a gearbox place to have the install done, then hed put it back in, This is the closest ive got. Finding the elusive gearbox place proving to be more challenging. Id prefer to drop off the car and have it done in one place but if I need to do the solution offered by the mechanic then Ill do that.

The above mechanic said he doesn't want to do it because it "wont last 5 minutes if not set up correctly". Given the price of these Im nervous to use someone without recommendation. Am I overly worrying ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Andrew

a.dutton@hotmail.com wrote:

The above mechanic said he doesn't want to do it because it "wont last 5 minutes if not set up correctly". Given the price of these Im nervous to use someone without recommendation. Am I overly worrying ?
 

No you're not.

I'm not in the UK so unable to assist with a recommendation, but, perhaps rather than hunting for a mechanic or gearbox place, look for an outfit that works with differentials.

Setting up the hypoid gears in a differential requires specialist tools & experience, if it's not done right, you end up with a noisy axle, and you only get one chance to get it right.  Get it wrong, and by the time you know it's wrong, it's too late to fix it.  By the way, it's not the differential that's going to be damaged, it's the ring & pinion gears.

Yukon Gear Instructions.

Just to give you an idea of what's involved, the link above will let you download a manual that shows the process for installing new gears on an existing differential, you should not need to do the pinion depth or pinion bearing pre-load adjustments, unless you're changing the pinion bearings - the final backlash & carrier bearing preload is where your focus would be.

I am kind of stupid so I done this myself. Sometimes by feel even but then I had a load of spare SJ diffs (allmost same as rear jimny) to swap as they broke. But they did not. I have never touched the crush sleeve and pinion pre-load though.
The last time I did the ARB on my jimny I was lucky enough to borrow the micrometer to measure backlash and other tools like a torque wrench so got it done kind of properly. Should have checked the contact pattern I guess but sounds and works fine.
I still might have done something stupid as it leaks air a bit now.

Where I live there are 4x4 specialists that can do the diff.
Most basic mechanically knowledged owners can remove the diff, put it in a box and send it to a specialist and, get it set up properly. Maybe where you live too?

Money thrown at a specialist to set it up is money well spent.