1993 Cobra Registry

I recently purchase a set of gears for my 93 Cobra. I removed the old stuff, put in the new stuff and I cannot get the slack out of the pinion shaft. It is not side to side slack, its in and out slack. I can't get the crush sleeve to crush, it actually isn't even touching the crush sleeve and I have the nut as tight as I can get it. I am wondering if there is difference in pinion flanges or did I get a bad pinion shaft. See pics below. One you can see the flange will only go down so far, so once I tighten it, it will not draw the pinion shaft anymore to crush the sleeve. the other pic shows the differences in the splines from the old and new one. the old one had longer splines. Is the problem the pinion shaft or pinion flange.

This one is a tough one to answer without actually being able to see what is going on.But you can shim up the pinion bearing to get the clearances correct so that the crush sleeve does its job.Like I said without seeing what is actually going on its hard to give good advice.


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If the new gear is the one on the left it looks like it is a totally different pinion? There is not enough spline on the shaft?

x2, something going on there.

Oh, and just in case, you are checking pinion depth and all that good stuff right? Setting up a rear end isn't just a remove and replace. Disregard if you are doing that, of course...

I would call the manufacturer of the gears and ask about the splines, I did one gear change, and the crush sleeve took way more force to crush than I ever would have thought. I was using a 1/2 breaker bar . finally took it to a guy that does differentials, he laughed at me, he bolted a bracket to the flange that locked it against the housing, then used a 3/4 air impact to get the sleeve to begin crushing, once it got close and the slack was almost gone, he then switched over to a breaker bar with a long cheater pipe to finish it off to specs.

Done prob 2 dozen gear changes. We took crush sleeve and reformed it a bit in a vice to expand it. Then reused it. Much easier to do that way. Mine has 35k on it and still going strong.


Richard White
Reproduction window sticker guy

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I cheated on my new crush sleeve also... I started it on my press and used the old crush sleeve as a guide, so I wouldn't press it too much.

Fixed. Impact is your friend..