Ok, so my trusty mechanic said he was capable of doing a final drive swap and that he had done it on many toyotas and mazdas along with many commercial vehicles. I trusted him and delivered the rear diff assembly and the new 4.77 gear set including my helms and the recommended bearings and crush sleeve.

Two days later I get the pumpkin back and I install it. It makes noise so he says bring the whole car back and he'll fix it. Well, that was 7 days ago. He says that he is machining the pinion shim down by .002 each time and it takes 45 min to do each set up there after. OK, I can see that.

What is striking me a little odd is that he is almost out of shim and we might end up using no shim at all. IS THIS POSSIBLE? and has anyone experienced using a shim smaller than what honda can provide?

I miss my car very badly and I'm sad.

 

You didn't just provide him with a Honda Shim kit? Would have probably saved you a lot of headaches.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by turbo_pwr
You didn't just provide him with a Honda Shim kit?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by glagola1

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by turbo_pwr

 

All the condescending sarcastic bullshit could have been avoided if you didn't write this "If you read all of my post you'd see that the root of the problem is that the shim required is far below the smallest thickness Honda provides. If I gave him the shim kit I would have wasted money." I am telling you he's not doing it right, how would you have known if the shim kit would be a waste of money if you didn't provide it to begin with? I don't know of one person who used the kit and had a problem, so I think it's more a fault of your mechanic and you not providing the shim kit then it is me giving you a hard time.

 

OK, I'm sorry if my reply to your post was harsh. I'm just a little freaked out by the fact that I've been w/o my baby for almost a week and a half and I was searching for something that might make me feel better about this whole thing.

My first mod has turned into a nightmare!

 

Seriously, I would have a talk with him. He's doing something wrong. You can call Jeff at Ganley Honda and ask him to overnight you the shims or something. You only pay for what you use and he credits you back the rest. I think I paid something in the range of $130 plus shipping for the entire kit of 20 shims.

 

I'm waiting for a call any minute. If I don't get a satisfactory response from him I'm going to call Jeff. I need to get a second opinion.

thanks

 

I would suggest that you get your mechanic to figure out what parts of the installation procedure he's doing wrong BEFORE you get any shims. From the sounds of it, he won't be able to use the shim kit anyway by the way he is doing this calibration. He's either done something else NOT in the Helm or he's not reading the book right.