I am installing another set or superior brand gears and I am chasing the pattern down and After 3 or 4 tries all going smaller and smaller pinion shim I have installed the smallest pinion shim that I have as that is the direction that the pattern tells me to go. It is a .020" shim. I am going to take some of my unused shims to work tomorrow and grind them down on our shim grinder to .015", .010", and .005" and try those. I have no shims under the bearing race in the housing if you are wondering. The drive side pattern is not wanting to move back towards the heel side, right now it is still a little too close to the toe side. I started at .050" shim and have only moved it back a little with a .020" shim.

My question is have any of you guys who do a lot of these ever ran into using shims this small or do you suspect that I messed something up? I am not asking you to diagnose my patterns as I can read and interpret those. I know for a fact that all my races are seated and I am checking my patterns each time with .008" - .010" backlash. I just thought it was odd to be going in the right direction and basically run out of range on my shim selection.

 

Man this got buried fast!

 

Bump to give you good luck. It sounds like greek to me.