Well attempt two on the ARB install didn't go well.

To bring everyone up to speed, I had purchased a 4.77 third member with plns on putting an ARB up front.

First oddball thing that happened was the ring gear would not fit the locker. The locker carrier is just a hair bigger than the ring gear. So...I took the ring gear and had it machined to fit, and bolted it up.

Now this weekend me and Tad were going to do the setup on the gears. We ended up taking all the shims out and tried a dry install and the gears bound up as soon as you tighten the caps.

It looks like there is no way to fit the oddball early 98 third member with an ARB locker.

I'll be buying an older third member to solve this problem.

Joe

That sucks Joe <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I had heard of people having to switch to an earlier carrier to make the ARB work. I never knew the extent of the issues till now <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" />

Hope you get it squared away for Uwharrie.

<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />Andre

That blows <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> what year is Sasha's rodeo?
Do you think it's only the first few months of 98?,like we talked about?
I wonder(out loud)if the 99 and up also used the Dana gear set's?

Bansil

I beleive that the 4.77's were only availble in the 2nd gen Rodeo/Amigo in 98.

I'll be currious to see how my 3rd measures up to yours Joe.

Joe: Is the issue realted to different specs for the gears or the 3rd? I know we've talked about this already, BU i know that Ducktrooper had to remove some material from his 3rd to make his ARB fit. HE was working w/ 4.30 gears and a 99 Trooper 3rd.

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

99 third will work fine, donno about the 4.77's though