WoW! Always wanted to see a write up on someone doing this! You > me, screw all that precise crap, I'd pay someone for that kind of job!

nice write up! sorry for the noob question though but when opening up the differential and putting in an aftermarket final drive, specifically what are the other parts that need to be bought/replaced? oil seals, etc?

You need a new crush collar, you may need a shim kit. I'd recommend you upgrade the cap bolts as stated in the original post. That's all I can think of!

First of all, great DIY write-up!

Now, for the pinion spacer (not the J's collar shim), did you re-use the old one or ordered a new one from Honda? You said the pinion depth was perfect in the first try and by using the old one I can see how that's possible. Thanks for clarifying.

Sorry for super late reply, I did not buy a new one, my pinion depth was close enough, not perfect but pretty good, so I left it alone. IIRC you cannot just buy one shim, you have to buy the entire kit which is like $130. This is going from memory and its been a while :)

After looking again, you can buy individual shims, it'd be pretty difficult to determine which would be the right one, but you can order just one.

Is there "an easy way" you can determine which shim would be the right one to use? lol.

You can now buy them individually:
http://www.speedalliance.com/catalog/produ...cat=3367&page=1

^ Thats the cheapest I have managed to find them for so far. $12ea

The cheapest thing to do is buy the STD shim size, which is the 3.81mm and find yourself someone with high tech milling equipment and have them take off material as needed. That is what I did, I had the guy take off .001" at a time until I reached my desired turning force for the pinion gear, I threw him $20. Originally AJR had J's send me like 4/5 but none of them were very close to what I needed.

Dumb question, but presumably any install of different ring gear and pinion will more than likely require shimming, even though the original bearing is being used? This is to take out any machining tolerances of the new parts?

Does this only apply to the pinion shim, and not the side bearing shims?

After full install with exedium diff collars, my diff whines like a whistling banshee from 65 mph to 50mph uncorrected with 4.77 Kia gears. There also a vibration from 82to 90 mph on partial to full throttle only. New right drive axle. Rotated driveshaft, and changed new rims and tires and problem still persists. Any advice please?

Bumping an old threat but good info! I recently had my ap1 diff go out so I got a virtually new AP2 diff and had SoS rebuild it with CT reinforcement, Js distance collar and all new bearings and its been great. As for the crush/distance collar, Puddy and J's seem to think its a great idea and better to retain tolerances in the end, I dont know enough to comment but Ill see if puddy will chime in here why he also prefers a solid collar opposed to the oem crush collar.