pinion shaft help!!!

[juice91si]

the pinion and ring gear on my 91 legacy ss are shot.

i ordered a new diff and pinion shaft from saltair in british columbia.

we removed the pinion shaft from my car, and compared it to the unit from saltair. obviously to my discontent, they appear to be quite different. will the new unit work? why are they different???

wtf!!!!!

i was assured (i asked like 20 times for him to make sure it was 91 specific, and had the 3.9 gearing + lsd etc etc) he pretty much guaranteed me every single time because he was staring at the parts, and they are a subaru only place.



the only difference is the part near the bottom (of picture)

[Legacy777]

Which one is the one your ordered, and one out of your car?

[SemperGuard]

They sent you one from an EA tranny. It wont fit. The EJ 4eat is functionally the same as the EA 4eat (since it is based on that tranny), but there are some minor differences, As you can see. There is a good chance it is for a 91, and it probably does have 3.9 gearing, but it's for an EA tranny.

[juice91si]

whats an ea tranny?

[All_talk]

Looks like the difference between early and late shafts, if so they will swap but the counter gear may be different. Check my old diff swap thread here:

http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic. ... +diff+swap

Hope that helps
Gary

P.S. on second look at your pic, the counter gear section looks the same, you should be on good shape.

[AWD_addict]

If you need another 3.90 ring and pinion, I have a set out of a '91 SS I could sell to you.

[juice91si]

transmission back on, with the proper shim, and everything fit perfectly. should eb able to test drive in a couple days. i hope nothing breaks *crosses fingers*

[mslimmer]

I'm in the process of reassembling my 5mt. The pinion shaft feels stiff esp. compared to the other rotating parts. Plus there is a little rotational play and a bit of noise. I've tried taking it apart again and again and looking, but whenever I put it back together and tighten down the four rear bolts (near those pesky shims) and tighten some of the case bolts the shaft gets hard to turn again.

Is this normal. I don't want to open it again but I'd rather do it now than drop the tranny again and do it later. What did you discover with those shims? Does anyone have the FSM pages for that 3-1 section (I've looked at these http://www.main.experiencetherave ... n_assy.jpg ones but some text would be nice.)


-M

[juice91si]

well, in my case, i was able to go to my local subaru dealer (which is the only one in the damn province) and got a printout of the shim specs, i believe theres only 4 different shim thicknesses...anyway, so the subaru DOES NOT WORK ON 4EATs, they ship em off to toronto, or contract *some* work to a local transmission shop.

i ended up meeting a confident, experienced and knowledgable transmission tech, who partially rebuilt my tranny and used the proper shim by checking the clearance.

if you dont get the right shim, you will screw up your ring and pinion.

if you are just reassembling the tranny with the same parts, you should be okay with the same shim.

so far, ive gone about 400kms and everything is going okay.

[mslimmer]

Thanks for the notes. I should have realized from the OP that it was an 4EAT. but I think the advice is still applicable to my 5MT.

I'm still worried about how difficult the shaft is to rotate, so maybe I'll keep looking around for advice.