Search the Community

The pinion yoke that came with our P15's rear diff will slide off and on the splined pinion shaft by hand. It does seem to be clocked however or maybe it's just a wear pattern - (by clocked I mean it will slide on when you rotate it and find the sweet spot alignment....this same pinion yoke was worn badly and I didn't much care for the narrow width speedi sleeve that's available for this yokes journal size, so we had it sleeved at a machine shop with a thicker sleeve they machined and pressed onto the yoke. After it was brought to my attention that due to this machining, the integrity of the yoke may have been altered enough to make it unsafe, so I began my hunt for another yoke. I purchased a yoke listed as NOS, and after receiving it I believe it to be a NOS part as it showed no signs of ever being installed, was covered in a thick cosmoline looking grease, and had a grease impregnated thick cardboard protective sleeve in place around the journal of the yoke. No rust anywhere EXCEPT for the journal area which had some light surface rust. ( due to the cardboard holding moisture over all the years I expect )...we polished off the rust to a clean surface (which resulted in removing 1.5 thousands of metal from the O.D. of the yoke journal). This new pinion yoke also seems to have a sweet spot where it will slide on the pinion shaft the furthest when clocked/rotated to a specific position, however - even in this sweet spot - it stops just slightly over a 1/4" shy of going all the way inside the diff to rest up against the pinion bearing. So it slides on easily for about 3/4"- then I can get it to go a bit further on by using the palm of my hand and forearm like a hammer...at this point I've got plenty of threads exposed on the end of the pinion shaft to put the nut on and pull the yoke on in with the nut and washer. Here's my question please for those of you experienced with these tapered axle diffs. 46 Plymouth P15,...IS THIS TIGHTENING UP ON THE PINION SHAFT FOR THE LAST 1/4-5/16 INCH CORRECT....OK.....PINCHIE WEANO'.....?? Folks I've talked with up to now, have told me that when they removed their pinion yoke - it slid off and on by hand,..like my original yoke does,..however my service manual does show a Miller tool C-452 being used to remove the drive pinion flange, which makes me think that a yoke without any wear must have had a bit of an interference fit... Trying to find out if this is OK, before I end up in a tight spot that could have been avoided. Thank you again forum members. Steve

I just started looking for a replacement pinion yoke and found the one pictured below in the 2ea pics which show the light surface rust on the journal. Initially I tried just having a speedi sleeve pressed on, and it would have been an good fix however the less than desirable narrow width of the sleeve left cause for how well and long it would work. if anyone out there has used or knows of a sleeve (maybe something other than the speedi brand, etc. ?) that is wider and covers more of the journal area I would appreciate the feedback. The speedi sleeve brand we tried was approx. 1/2 " wide so it needed to be driven on " just so far" on the journal to ride both seals (dust and oil), or it needed to be driven on again " just so far" if you wanted a little relief room and you positioned it so just the oil seal would ride on it, thinking that the front dust seal is more foregiving and can survive riding on the original surface. anyway- trying to drive the sleeve on to " just the right" position and then also trying to drive the new pinion seal in to "just the right " position so everything lined up as needed, just seemed a bit more difficult than practicle only offering up a 16th " or so for error...seems like a wider sleeve would solve all this, but again - it just might not be out there and available. Found this pinion yoke on ebay from a seller with a 100% rating who offers returns, listed as NOS. My experience over the last 5 yrs in ordering parts, (especially off ebay), is that if they say NOS, there's a better than 50 % chance that it's defective and that's why it was never used. Who knows why it was never discarded. Anyway - I wrote the fella and after a swapping messages, I went ahead and purchased it, knowing it could be returned. Sure enough it looks pretty pristine and has a cosmoline type grease still on the majority of the flange assembly. It also had a round cardboard sleeve impregnated with the stuff slipped over the yoke journal, however as ya can see in the pics a surface rust has just begun to attack the journals seal surface. I'm guessing if I took steel wool or some 2500 grit wet sand and started polishing it wouldn't take long to get it all gone. (Can't really feel the corrosion with your fingernail other than the slight drag you feel when you move from the shiny surface to the dull areas, if that makes sense My best guess would be that I could polish this out with no more than a thousandth (.001) reduction to the overall O.D. size of the journal,...but lets say I'm off on that, and it might have to go as far as 2 thousandths to clean up....any one out there got the experience to share some knowledge on how far a person could downsize this and still have good results, (also with the placement of a new pinion seal as well)...?? I can be pretty good at assuming, which most times isn't a good gamble...polishing out by hand - depending on how far you go, might cause a slight un-even O.D. ? which might shorten the life of this seal, ? etc...don't know, again doing a lot of assuming...thank you in advance to any and all forum members who take the time to shed a little knowledge my way on this. All responses encouraged and welcome. Thanks for the help and support. Steve