Changed my rear diff gears this week

I took this week off of work (had plenty of vacation time to use) to de-stress. My main goal was to do this gear swap, from 3.23 to 3.73. Ya'll answered a lot of questions beforehand. It went alright! The most frustrating part was the carrier shims. The pinion went pretty well, the stock shim size worked first try. Turned out the stock carrier shim sizes were a little too big with the new bearings. Probably close to 10 in-and-outs with that dang heavy chunk of metal to get that backlash right.

A local shop charged nearly $90 to take off the older bearings off the pinion and carrier, and to put the new ones on the carrier. I thought that was kind of steep so when it came time to put the final bearing on the pinion I froze the gear and heated up the bearing. Went on perfectly.

Pattern turned out good in the end. Learned a lot. Glad I had most of the tools already. Having a shop press would've been nice, and a 12 ton from Harbor Freight probably would've been a better idea than the $90 at the shop. Oh well.

First break-in drive went good. Didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. My brake/abs lights did come on, I may have messed up a speed sensor when I cleaned off the brakes, I'll see if it come back.

I'm sore as heck. There's a lot of pounds to pull and push under there and it's none too comfortable on a creeper and cold concrete. Next step is a Lew tune!