Where can I buy shims for a dana 300?

vanguard

vanguard

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2005
Location
Apex, NC
My buggy is a dirty wench that brings both great pain and great pleasure. I've been having the roughest wrenching weekend. My dana 300 was making noise and had too much play in the rear output. When I took it apart I discovered that it was assembled incorrectly and that the shims were between the speedo gear and the speedo gear spacer (7&8 in the pic below). That caused them to wear away until eventually there was enough play in the t-case to cause movement and noise.

On the positive side, the bearings and races seem to be in great shape.

Now I need new shims (part 9) but I can't find them anywhere. I've tried autozone, napa, carquest, and the jeep dealer? Do anybody have any ideas?

dana300.JPG
 
dana 300 shims

I'm still curious if the shims from a Dana 44 pinion would work but I just sold my stock Dana 300 output so I can't check. They can't be off by much
 
Well, the buggy is ready to go now. It was pretty frustrating at times but I'm a better mechanic because of the experience.

The first problem was that the transfer case was making an evil noise. This is the t-case as I just got to it. You can see the rear housing was part of the tera heavy duty output kit.
DCP_3887.JPG


I tried like heck to get the yoke nut off with a breaker bar but it just wasn't happening. In every picture I saw of somebody removing it they used an impact wrench. I've wanted one for a long time and I've done my research. In the end I went with the nitrocat after a lot of positive feedback on pirate4x4. It did its job so quickly and quietly it was kind of a letdown. I expected it to struggle a little but it just went uh, uh, uh zzzzing. In about 1 second it was off. :supz:
DCP_3888.JPG


I had to tap the rear housing to get it off the main t-case housing.
DCP_3889.JPG


This is what I found. The shim was worn and the bearing no longer sat nicely in its spot. I'm not sure why the shim wore like that but I think it was either caused by too much play during the initial setup, being in the wrong spot, or just hard use.
DCP_3890.JPG


If you look at this pic you can see the shims are supposed to go between the rear speedo gear spacer and the rear race. However, I found them between the speedo gear and the speedo gear spacer.
dana300.JPG


This is a shot of the tera heavy duty rear output.
DCP_3891.JPG
 
I looked *all* over for shims for my dana 300. The only shims I could find were part of kits that cost $150 and up. I couldn't bring myself to spend that much on $1.50 worth of shims. I eventually found shims for a rear end that had the right inner diameter but the wrong outer diameter. Now my wife is an amateur jeweler so I asked her for help. She had me mark the appropriate size while she cut/filed it to spec. To be honest, I didn't end up using her shims because I didn't need them. However, I didn't understand how the shims worked in relation to the bearing and I did need her stuff to learn it.
DCP_3895.JPG


I used the black gasket maker stuff to seal up the housing.
DCP_3896.JPG


I should note, I also replaced the rear most bearings. They weren't actually that bad but I got the old one pretty gritty while I was working on it so I dropped in the new bearings I had bought a few days earlier.
 
So what shims did you end up using? BTW, i like those nice shiny tools.
 
Which shims in terms of size? I'm not sure. But there were two shims on there from before. When I used both it was too loose. When I used one it was pretty much no play at all but I could still spin it by hand. I just sort of did it by trial and error but didn't need more shims when I used the new bearings.
 
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