Figure 9. There are many good gear companies out there, after much searching and looking and reading, we decided to go with Revolution Gear for the 4:88 ring and pinion for the rear axle. While the Jeep currently has 32 inch tires, the 4:88 gears will allow us to upsize a modest amount later if we want, and if we don't, we still get a benefit from a little deeper crawl ratio.

Figure 10. We also went with the master install kit from Revolution Gear, which uses good quality Koyo bearings. The only failing we can see with the kit is a small selection of shims for the carrier and pinion depth. It seems a lot of the manufacturers are not providing a large shim assortment with their kits, was we also have a Yukon shim set, and it was not any better.

Figure 11. These are the measurements for the old shims that were in the axle. NRGS is Non-Ring Gear Side of carrier. RGS is Ring Gear Side of carrier, PP is Pinion Preload, and PD is Pinion Depth. We were going to use these as the baseline to start the shims on the new carrier and gears, but these numbers are way off of what Dana recommends to start with, which is .035. We set up .035 shim packs and started setting up the gears from there.

Figure 12. To prepare the carrier for the ring gear, it was placed in the freezer for a couple hours to shrink the unit down enough to slip the ring gear onto the landing. Before that though, the face of the carrier was stoned as well as the mounting face of the ring gear to remove any burrs or high spots.