so I changed my pinion seal and didnt mark the bolt to line it back up right. Its a s4 tii rearend, any idea on how to torque this thing down? i searched with no luck, thanks in advance for any help!

--joel

 

the companion flange nut? where it bolts to the driveshaft?
fsm on axel section page 9-36
it says 94-130 ft pounds

 

Forgive my ignorance on the matter, but does the S4 rear need to have pinion pre-load reset when you change the seal?

 

yeah it goes into the rearend and the driveshaft bolts to it. that sounds about right.

 

hmmmm...you might be right man, im not positive.

 

Not an expert on this but just read the FSM section on it. It says to tighten the lock nut to 94-130 ft-lb (as previous poster said), but at this point it says "Note: Do not install the seal." Not that in the FSM it's describing assembly after an overhaul.

then it goes on...

4. Turn the companion flange by hand to seat the bearing.
5. Measure the drive pinion preload. If the specified preload can not be oobtained, replace the collapsible spacer with a new one and check again. "Preload: 7.8 - 12.2 in-lb"

So hopefully you just torque the the lock nut and are done, since you didn't mess with the internals.

 

Thanks! thats very helpful!

 

I'm not 100% on this, but I "think" anytime you remove the pinion nut, you need to replace the crush sleeve, and reset pre-load. Someone with more experience in rear-ends for Rx's needs to chime in on this one though.. But that's how it's been with other cars I've worked on. Failure to properly set pre-load can cause lots of headaches..

 

While all the manuals say this, nobody does for just a seal leak and its fine. It takes quite a bit of torque to crush the sleeves. Back in school we used a fancy torque multiplier and still would struggle to crush them when building rear ends. Every shop i've worked in never replaces the crush sleeve for just a seal replacement and i don't recall seeing a come back ever from it.

I'm sure there is some reason every single manufacturer says to change the sleeves but i'd guess its more of a cover your *** thing when seals were replaced on rear ends with failing crush sleeves or already incorrect preload/gear contact.