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Lincoln "K" Technical Questions

1931 differential and most likely others.
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The Winter 2020 F & B had an excellent technical article about installing the Phil Bray/ORF 3.96:1 gear set. I bought a set too and it's been hibernating in its shipping box since '97. I really enjoyed Dana Morgan's write-up but am curious about the lack of pinion bearing preload. He sets it at half to .001" end play and I've not seen pinion bearings set loose before. My experience has been to set them at about 25 inch pounds of rolling torque for new and lubricated bearings. The differential doesn't seem to be archaic or unique and it uses modern tapered roller bearings. The bearing support off the gear head is similar to the more modern Ford 9" or early 70s Cadillac which I have a service manual for, both of those call for pre-loaded bearings. I do have some old Dyke's encyclopedias from the period and they do advise running the pinion with what is called slight end play at .005" on one Timken-Detroit model. The diff in our Lincolns (is it used through the entire L & K era?) is not shown or mentioned. Once again I am pleased that Dana wrote the article and hope he contributes here, but I thought I'd spark something on this forum rather than call him. It goes against my judgement to set it loose.

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