Rear end slop

Scott7512

Active Member
May 19, 2015
153
8
38
Branchland WV
Under the car today and it seemed like there is too much slop when turning the drive shaft. Since I am not driving the car till spring, I decided to look into it. I pulled the cover off and looked around. The backlash looks to be 18. Pattern is concave side in the middle and convex side is more towards the outside but not extreme. I would say the center of the mark is 3/4 to the outside.
When I move the wheels there is also slop in the axles where they connect to the spider gears. I can also move the smaller spider gears a bit.
I also have had a whine on coast. No whine on acceleration.
My main question right now is how much if any slop should be with the axles to the spider gears? I am thinking there should be none at the spline where the axle goes into the spider gear. These are 28 spline I think.
 
There's lots of places for slop to add up. Axle splines to side gears, side gears to pinion gears, pinion gears to pinion shaft, pinion shaft to diff case, ring gear to pinion gear. Trying to judge things by moving the wheels or the pinion yoke can be misleading.
 
Also noticed that the bearing caps appear to be reversed. The arrows are pointing towards the inside. Maybe they also reversed the spacers and that increased the backlash.
I will take it apart and investigate a little more.