To sum it up:

Day one while working on the arb install we determined that there was no way that the ring gear would fit onto the ARB carrier. We found that out after doing our measurements, selecting shims and pressing the brand new set of bearings onto the ARB carrier. We called around to find a place to machine, grind, cut, mill, buff or do anything to make the ring gear fit but we came up dry on a Saturday.

Joe headed home and found someone who was able to grind it to fit. He also had to have the holes in the ARB carrier elongated to match the holes in the ring gear.

The ring gear has DANA stamped into it and it was from a 1998 Isuzu with 4.77s, and as near as we can tell this was from the 6 months in 1998 where the 3rd members were "non standard."

Joe also did a test fit and found that he had to grind the 3rd member housing quite a bit to clear the ARB carrier. One of the bearing caps and its associated bosses had to be ground almost to the holes for the bearing cap bolts.

Joe came back up this weekend to finish the install (now that the ring gear was mounted to the carrier).

Using our measured set of shims we found that we couldn't get the carrier into the differential case. We removed shims until we had no shims with the bearing. The carrier was still a tight fit, tight to the point that once fully seated in the 3rd member the carrier wouldn't turn. It essentially had negative backlash. It was simply pushed onto the pinion so far that the friction made it not possible to turn the thing by hand.

We decided to see if we had a bearing difference. The inner section of the bearing where it presses onto the carrier looked thicker on the bearings that he had for the ARB. We found a 10-bolt bearing from the carrier that came with the 1998 4.77s and it has a different part number, thickness and inner diameter. None of it was very much off, but in terms of differential clearances everything about this thing is off.

So now Joe has an ARB carrier (that is fine) and a set of 4.77 gears + 3rd member housing that nobody can use anymore. He is going to order a 3rd member from a different year and we'll go from there. I'm getting tired of pulling bearings off of carriers though.

-Tad