The ring gear on my differential from my 580B is turning out to be quite the challenge to get as a complete setup.:Banghead The reason for this, is because the ring gear is riveted to the center hub. I can find gears all day long, but not the combination with the two joined together. So, who here thinks it would be a bad idea to remove the rivets, replace the ring gear, and bolt the two together with grade 8 bolts. Of course I would torque the bolts down to the standard torque for their size and grade. Then to make sure that they don't back out, stake the nuts? If there is clearance for the bolts (would need to use a socket head bolt) and nuts, and the ring gear is piloted to the hub through the center pilot, not using the rivets to hold the pilot or runout, wouldn't this work? I know it is not original OEM design, but I cannot find anyone who has the ability to rivet the two together in my area and provide enough tonnage for the rivets to fully seat.
The bolt shank would need to fill the hole in the carrier/gear. Tighter the better. If it were loose in the drilling, you are only relying on the nut tension to hold it together. IMHO, not a good long term option. Is the cross shaft tight in the carrier? Any movement there will also shorten the life of the new gears. I've taken a bit of a look back in the HEF archives, hoping this question was asked before & "Phil" may have known the answer........ could not come up with anything. It is possible the answer is buried in a thread with a different topic...... IF you search for 580CK B & include Phil, the information & help he gave members owning these models is pure gold. I did find this - HeavyEquipmentForums
Yair . . . wi4x4man . I think alrman is right on the money. I would go as far as to say the holes should be reamed to some constant value and furnished with fitted (turned to size) bolts. This practice is very common in the Marine Industry on propeller shaft couplings and engine retaining bolts for instance. Cheers.
An application like this usually has several shoulder bolts which have a turned diameter and fit in a reamed hole. This is done to maintain concentricity and keep the gear from moving. A good tool and die shop should either have them or know where to get them for you.
Fastenal has them, they are called "body bound bolts"
Thanks for all of the ideas guys! Here is my theory... Since the ring gear is piloted to the hub, concentricity should automatically be held. Whatever runout is there would be tolerance stackup between the gear and the hub itself, not really between the difference with the holes and the bolts. In talking with a good friend of mine who has literally rebuilt hundreds of differentials on heavy trucks, he said that he never came across rivets to hold the ring gear to the hub. All of the ones he ever worked on were bolted, but the bolts were of course tight. On top of this, if you think of every engine adaptation, the flex plate is always piloted to the flywheel and held together with bolts. There is always clearance between the two. Long story short, I am going to give it a whirl with the bolts. I will post some pictures and show what I found out with this process including part numbers and such.
International paddlewheel pan had the ring gear on the paddles go out years ago and it was riveted on just cut out the rivets put on new gear heated new rivets with torch put them in and buck with a hammer in vise while beating the other end of rivets with hammer never had a problem with it.
The clamping force not attained by the rivet .... may be greatly exceeded by the bolts .... myself I would probably use the bolts but work toward the tight fit mentioned above and use astute judgement in the choice of where & what spec to purchase these ... don't want to have to do this job again, yes?
No, I don't want to have to do this job again, and whatever I do I want it to be right so I am being very meticulous here. My Dad busted the pinion about 15 years ago (only 500 hours ago) by doing something really STUPID with the backhoe (full speed into a brush pile that wasn't moving). The failure in this case is a wrong pattern because he never bothered to set any of that, just slapped it back together the way it came out. We have had the machine for well over 20 years now, and it is such a handy machine to have on the farm that I cannot justify ever letting it go, so I am going to do this carefully. I am sure my kids will be operating her some day, and they are too young yet for the failure to occur on their watch, it would likely happen to me again. Maybe if the kids were teenagers I wouldn't care so much and hand the problem down to them.. lol
Yes, bolts work Used to buy Dana gears to fit Jaguar rear ends for about 20% of what factory Jag ring & pinion cost. The only change was a stepped bolt as the Jag carrier was tapped for 7/16 20 & the Dana ring gear had 1/2" holes. Just need the right size bolts.
Not going to believe this. Through my connections at work, I got in touch with one of the original engineers that worked on the drivetrain. He told me that the rivets were used for a few reasons: 1) Cost Rivets were more readily available than specialty nuts and bolts back when the unit was designed. Now you can pick up all sorts of different hardware that has very high strength and are a lot cheaper. 2) Cost Rivets were faster to assemble, cutting labor costs. 3) Liability The biggest concern however was of they were bolted together, there is always the worry that a nut or bolt could accidentally loosen up. If that happened, it could destroy the gears and bearing carriers, maybe even the case altogether. I have a nut sitting on my desk at work that went through a Funk 56000 series gearbox (never fell out, got left behind during assembly) out of a Timberpro processor. While the spur gears did not appear to get damaged, the carriers were blown apart. It is neat because you can see the teeth from the gear as well as the machining marks from the gears. So, if I bolt it together, use loctite and stake the nuts, I will be perfectly fine. The slop between the bolts and the gear / hub isn't a very big concern either as the clamping force is there, and it isn't a timing gear arrangement. Either way, if they are torqued down properly and do not loosen up, the clamping force will be better than what could be obtained through rivets.
I have to disagree. You need the shoulders on the bolt to be tight in both the ring gear and the carrier. If there is (and there will be) a lot of torque on the ring gear eventually the ring gear will move taking up the slack. Example wheel studs are always tight. Drove a class 8 truck with a flanged driveline on front. Bolts weren't shouldered properly (too small) When backing up I could feel it move under heavy torque. Going forward same thing. I took it apart and drilled it out and put proper shoulder bolts in it. One flange had smaller shoulder than other. Problem solved.
What size of hole do you have? Aircraft Spruce is one source that has aviation grade hardware that you can buy that is specifically designed to hold shear loads: http://www.aircraftspruce.com/menus/ha/bolts.html?pageno=2 You can even put a aviation grade castle nut on it with a cotter key to ensure that it will not come loose. This aviation hardware stuff (which exceeds grade 8 standards) will surely exceed the strength of any material that would be "rivetable", and it wouldn't cost a whole lot either, estimating $10-$20. What size of holes do you have, how many, and how thick is the total material you are joining? I can help you decode what fasteners would best fit your application and you could order them direct.
I don't know what the size is as I have not gotten the rivets drilled out and removed yet. Working on getting the machine split right now. I hate dealing with grease and dirt covered things, so I have spent nearly all day degreasing and cleaning everything. I plan on splitting her tomorrow. I will let you know though because I am interested in this! Thanks!
Got her all apart today. There were 12 of them and the sizes were: Hub and ring gear combined thickness: .845" Hole diameter: .392" Maximum head /nut height gear side: .625" Maximum head /nut height hub side: .250" (might be able to go a tenth of an inch more, but need to keep the height down to stay away from the pinion gear that drives the LH side bull gear.) What was interesting to note is that the rivet diameters ranged from .384" to .390" so there was some slop between the rivet, ring gear, and hub.
yes but the rivets would swell out into the different hole diameters when their bradded
You said your father redid this rearend before, maybe he didn't hit the rivets enough.
Go to fastenal and buy rivets stake them in a shop press. Bolts wont work as it is impossible to reem the hardened ringear for shoulder bolts The rivets will fillup the uneaven holes no prolem. Put 3 bolts in first to hold together while you stake the first rivets Be sure to stake them cold ( the hot rivits will be loose in the hole when they cool off)
He bought the ring gear and hub as a complete assembly from Case, so everything was already riveted together.
Well, I came up with a bolted solution, and things worked exceptionally well. As it turns out, the diameter of the holes in the ring gear and the hub happen to fit an M10-1.5 bolt PERFECTLY!!!!! Literally, you CAN NOT get a better fit than this without being an interference fit. They were tighter than the rivets were! Even when loose, the backlash between the hub and the ring gear was not even measurable on my dial indicator... If I had to guess, it was around .0003" (the needle moved, but only a third of the way to the .001 marker). So what I did was I started out by drilling out the flat head side of each rivet with a 25/64 bit. The rivets are made from very soft material, and drilling was easy as pie. I would drill down to the level in which the bit was relatively even with the mounting surface plane of the hub. Then using a 3/8" punch, I knocked each rivet out. The only reason why I needed to knock them out was to separate the shank of the rivet from the drilled head of the rivet. What I ended up doing was purchasing M10-1.5 x 30mm Grade 10.9 Black Oxide Low Head Socket Cap Screws (Fastenal part: 11135580) in combination with M10-1.5 x 8mm thick Grade 10.9 black oxide nuts (Fastenal part: 90709). Total cost here was about $67.00 for twelve nuts and twelve bolts. A bit on the expensive side for hardware, but these are not very common bolts, and I used the Holo-Krome brand which are better quality anyways. The head of the bolt itself was on the hub side with the threaded section placed through the hub side first and into the ring gear, with the nut on the ring gear side (obviously). I used loctite on each nut, torqued them down to 40 ft-lbs in the "star" sequence and then staked each nut in three places as an added measure that they would not unthread. When installed, the length of 30mm was even with the edge of the nut, so clearance was not an issue. In addition to this, I was able to look up the material specs on the hardware and compare them to the material specs on the rivets (which I had to take a few educated guesses on). Being an engineer who deals with complete equipment design, I do know my way around clamping force vs torque, GD&T, and bolt elongation (which leads to shank diameter narrowing). The setup I came up with is 4x stronger than the original rivet design in terms of torque carrying ability. The theoretical elongation (due to clamping force between the head of the bolt and the nut) was negligible. And the clamping force of the 12 bolts causes enough friction between the ring gear and the hub that mitigates the .0003" backlash between the ring gear and the hub. After installing the gear to the hub, I installed the whole setup into the gear box. There are absolutely no interference issues anywhere, with plenty of clearance between the LH bull gear and the bolt heads, which is where the tight portions were. During this entire process though, I found the "smoking gun" as to why the system failed. The bearing carriers are essentially a single cast iron piece that looks like a square plate with a male pilot. The male pilot goes into the gear case and also holds the shaft seals and bearing cups. As it turns out, the LH carrier was broken such that the pilot was allowed to move within the square plate, side to side by about .015" (mind you, this is all supposed to be one cast piece of iron). The fracture caused a lack of bearing preload, and also introduced varying gear backlash. Since there is a side force developed on that shaft due ot the geometry of the pinion and ring gear mesh, that is likely where the crack originated from. At any rate, now I am just waiting for the bearing carriers to arrive (bought two new ones instead of keeping the good old one in there). Long story short, using M10-1.5 bolts was the ticket. It was almost like the holes were designed for metric hardware.
Sounds like you got it.
Thanks for such a detailed explanation. That is really great. Quick question (I hope you are still frequenting HEF..): When you setup the pinion did all of the gears slide freely on the pinion? I have one set of gears in the middle that will not slide on the pinion shaft splines which I feel will make setup much more difficult..
Hi KevinF, HA! I had the SAME DAMN PROBLEM!!! First and second gears (those closest to the pinion gear) went on without any problems. However, when I put the oil slinger gear as well as third and fourth gears in, I could only get them on about part way. While they slid nicely onto the bad shaft without much clearance, they certainly did not slide on the new shaft. So what I did was put some bluing onto the shaft. Then when I put the gears back in (didn't matter where the gears were on the spline either) I could see where the interference was on the gear splines where the witness marks were. Then I took a small file and meticulously went through each of the offending spline grooves on the gears and shaved off small amounts until they slid on without any problems. It added about 2 hours to the job, but eventually they were sliding on without any problems. The backlash between the shaft spline and the gear was pretty minimal too (plenty within industry standard specs). I have put about 45 hours on the machine since I made the repair, and have not had a lick of issues. About the only thing that I consider an "issue" is that if I use the brakes a lot (can't help it when the clutch is linked to the brakes) the drum on the LH side will clunk on the shaft when going from neutral to reverse. It wouldn't happen when I would start to use it for the day, but after about 20 depressions of the brakes it would start. I alleviated the problem by loosening up the brake tension on the LH brake (I originally set them too tight anyways). The other problem (if you can even call it that) I have comes down to the fact that the machine is clean now. Before, all of the vibration was damped by everything being coated with an inch of oily dirt. Now that it is clean, there are a bunch of annoying vibration sounds caused by the pulsing of the hydraulic pump, pins moving freely, and etc. When the weather warms up I am going to go back into everything and isolate all of the offending vibration noises with some rubber dampers, clamps, and etc.
The collar that slides on the splines (where the orange line points) actually has a .010 difference from one end to the other. Pretty significant! I had to beat the pinion out about half way.. Was not fun, only harmed my nerves though, I think. Thanks for the response. Edited to add the photo.
To add a little more detail since it was a little vague and .005" interference is not exactly correct. The old and new pinion measure at 1.611" across the outside of the splines over their entire length. The gear (11 and 12) that I find has interference is about 1.620 at the back and 1.610 at the front. The next gear forward (15) is about 1.616 or 1.617" on the inside. Here are a couple pics of the gear's ID and old pinion, and the diagram which shows the numbers I am referencing. So I am thinking the easy solution is to do as you did and make the tight spot (about 1/4" in length) about 1.616 across. Easy enough, although it will no doubt be tedious! Thanks for the help
Now that I think about it, I also had the same problem with that collar... But it wasn't by THAT much... I ended up filing about .001" off of a few of the splines from the major diameter. So I assume your old shaft was the one that had the interference?? If that is the case... Well, that is odd. I didn't have the interference on the old one, it was the new one. When I pulled the shaft out everything slid off as nice as can be. I am thinking that perhaps you might have something else going on as to why the failure happened... Was the shaft that much larger across the length or was it the collar?
Is that the new shaft? Looks like the splines were heated.
Correct, that is the old pinion shaft. Both shafts are a consistent diameter along their entire length. The blue on the pinion gear shaft coincides with the shiny on the inside of the collar in the picture. The new one is from Reliable Aftermarket Parts and measures the same outside diamter as the old one. I had to beat the pinion out of the case until the blued part released from the collar shiny spot. Nothing but proper technical terms here, eh! The failures, I think, were largely due to lost carrier bearing preload. The LH side carrier bearing plate failed (I have another post where I have shown pictures along the way, splitting the tractor and finding the broken parts, here: )
Well that is odd, I wonder what would have caused that to heat up like that to begin with. Wonder if whomever worked on it in the past maybe slid the collar on by heating it up with a torch or something.
Just a heads up as I am sure people are referring to this information as a few have already contacted me about this repair, and I figured I would give an update to the durability of the repair since it isn't a "factory" designed setup. I have clicked over 200 hours since the rebuild, and still no issues. Been doing a lot of heavy pushing too (brush piles) and no problems. At least I have put enough dirt back into the machine to isolate all of those annoying vibration sounds though.
I also did my ring and pinion replacement this way, but I didn't use the shallow head cap screws. The (M10x1.5x30mm) bolts and nuts fit with no grinding.
Old post with lots of good info! I'll be doing this exact thing with my 580b ordering bolts tonight ring and pinion came yesterday!