Well I had the day off from work so I decided to go ahead and put in the new pinion shaft, thrust washers and springs today in the front locker. I was trying to figure out what exact component was causing this erratic behavior so first I replaced the pinion shaft and left the weak springs and the old trust washer on the locker. That made a bit of a differance but it was still clunking. So I went ahead and removed the locker replaced the old trust washers and replaced the springs with the longer stronger ones I had and drove it on 4wd full time (I have a 242) up and down the driveway (the nearest wheeling spot is about 50-60 miles away), and it was way better than before BUT I was still getting some intermittent clunking. I tried putting one of the old thrust washers on top of the new thrust washer (the tech guy at richmond said I could do that) but then I couldn't get the pinion shaft in, I hammered hard enough but I didn't want to damage anything. The teeth on the locker aren't damaged in any way so I know it wasn't that. Frustrated I then called the gearshop that I got the thrust washers from and asked about getting a new carrier since that is the only thing that hasn't been replaced out front and the guy said that all he needed to do was to swap over the ring gear to the new carrier and that that was it. I asked if he needed to reset the ring and pinion and he said no, he said that as long as I kept the original bearing cups & caps and kept them on their original sides that I was going to be ok. What the heck??? Is this guy for real? He has done a rear re-gear for me on my other truck about a year ago and the truck is still running fine so he does good work but is this true about the front dana 30? By the way he wants $65 for a new carrier and bearings and to swap over the ring-gear. I'm very close to just calling it quits on this thing and just putting the spider gears back in. Tearing down a D30 three times now is NO fun.

Fred R.