no cracks in housing

yeah i think it needs more shims

The ring gear doesn't look quite as bad, but then again, the pinion will see 4.3X more wear than the ring simply because it has fewer teeth.

Shimming may take a bit of work to get so they mesh perfectly, but not too tight. And then, after several runs, you might want to take another look because there will be some wear and might need to tweak it a bit more. After that, they should be fine until they just wear out from extensive use or some other failure (fatigue, other part breaking , etc).

do i use light grease?

I just put enough to cover the ring gear. Most of it flings off when the gears are spinning at high speed anyway, so I don't think it matters as long as there is something on there.

yeah is 50,000wt ok?

I'm not sure. I just use whatever I have laying around. :oops:

You should replace the ring gear and pinion at the same time - a new pinion on an old, worn ring gear won't last as long or wear properly. Any thick grease on the gears is fine - it flies off anyways, but a light coat will remain.

yeah same here
i think this pinion is trashed. even shimmed to the max it still grinds. the bearings seem to have rounded out the housing so it has a tiny bit of play. that may be a suspect.

could i just swap with buggy diffs and pinions and gear down?
caster parts are much cheaper than xray lol

ok i swapped with Ex-1 diffs and to say the least they are much better built than xrays and they are alot smoother too. but they are buggy diffs so i had to gear down but thats ok im running 9/48 but im switching to 11/48 for a little more top end. will be ordering caster truggy rings and pinions to replace xrays diff.

FYI, I just opened the diff on my XT8 (ripped the shocktower off the bulkhead doing repeated stupid jumps :smile:) and noticed that the pinion has two shims between the pinion and the bearing (pushing it closer to the diff). The gears look in very good condition considering the punishment I put this truggy through, and it wasn't new when I got it (got it from a member here).

I know you came up with a different solution, but just thought I'd toss how mine is set up for kicks.

did you just say caster diffs are much better than xray???????

yes my xray diffs are just worn i think. caster is cheaper.:yipi: not saying better