Nov 1, 2005

By:ORC STAFF
Jeep at Off-Road.com
Zack and I started this project for the same reason most guys do-the chain
had stretched after 20 years, and on hard acceleration the chain would slip on
the sprockets making a thumping noise and associated vibrations. This
particular QT had life easy until it met Zack's lead foot and a dose of
massaged 360 with all the goodies. We decided to wait until we had the time
to really go through his QT since in our case it would require moving a 40
gallon Aero tank out of the way!
If I were you, I would order my QT chain, fluid, and gasket/seal kit a week
BEFORE you start this job. Most 4X4 places can easily order this stuff, but
few will stock it. CROWN brand TCL-1 is the most commonly available QT
lube, which you NEED if you plan to run the stock differential in the QT case.
Another note is that Federal Mogul makes superior input and output shaft
seals to the units that come in the kits. If it is possible, order all the gaskets
and seals separately to obtain the highest quality. However, you will probably
have to order both the kit and the separate seals if you want the highest
quality seals, and don't want to spend a lot of time finding this stuff. If you are
going to recondition your differential, you may find it handy to have a spare
parts QT or two in order to mix and match a good set up.
Before we get underway, download the following file by RIGHT clicking and
selecting "SAVE LINK AS" so that you can have Acrobat open separate from
your browser.
If you left click the link many browsers will integrate Acrobat right into itself.
By RIGHT clicking, you can flip between windows for reference.
Be patient when loading, and don't click around-I noticed Acrobat locks up
when loading and you get impatient.
QT Explod-O-gram

"Why do I want this Reader thing"?

OK, now that you have the files downloaded and can see what I'm talking
about, let's get on with it!

Zack has a tank on his Chero that is much like strapping a home oil tank on
the underside of your truck, so that had to come out first, but if you are
running the stock tank, you have plenty of room to drop the QT.
 Before you actually take out the QT, you will wish you had done this later, so
do the following now:
Remove your rear driveshaft only. Find a socket big enough for the rear QT
yoke nut and a torque wrench that can go to at least 150 lbs. Put your
Emergency brake on, transmission in Neutral, even chock front wheels if
desired. We like to keep the injuries to a minimum. Crawl under and put the
torque wrench on, and in the "tightening" clockwise direction, see how many
ft. lbs. of torque it takes until the rear yoke turns. What you are measuring is
the amount of force it takes to slip the brake cone style differential. Between
80 and 150 lbs. indicates a healthy differential inside of the QT according to
the factory.
More than likely, it failed miserably, and hasn't been functioning correctly for
years, without you noticing it. Without the differential functioning correctly in a
QT, it operates like other full-time chain driven boxes, and will still run either or
both axles depending on conditions, but it does not power both in a constantly
varying torque split as it will when functioning correctly. Forget about finding a
new differential, you will have to rebuild your old one. This procedure is NOT
in any manual, as the factory recommended replacing when worn.
Guess what? There are no replacements. Sure, you may find one in some
obscure place, but most of us will not, AND it will be quite salty if the guy
knows what he has.
Read on, and we will describe the methods you can use for reconditioning a
BWQT differential later in this article.
Remove drain plug and drain as best you can-you won't get it all.
Remove the front driveshaft at the QT itself. Yes it sucks. No, I haven't found
a better way to get the bolts out of the front yoke. 1/4 turn, flip wrench, repeat
until numb. Of course they used the finest thread possible which requires
about 4x more effort to remove.
Remember this frustration when it's time to re-assemble, and clean the
threads on a wire wheel, and tap or clean the yoke threads. Your wrist will
thank you.
Next, remove the bolts holding the rubber mounts to the crossmember, jack
and support the transmission, (but NOT on the pan, unless you take
precautions) and separate the TH400 adapter plate from the TH400 leaving it
bolted to the QT. This way, you can inspect the rubber mount which is most
likely trashed. I would replace the mount and the stabilizer grommets with poly
units. We did on my J truck AND Zack's Chero, and they feel VERY solid, and
won't tear nearly as easily as the laughable rubber units. The mount is the
same as a Chevy tranny mount, and the stabilizer grommets are a common
size-take them to a reasonably stocked 4X4 or drag race-type machine shop
and they will have them. They usually have the stabilizer bolt as well, but you
can also get them from many 4x4 vendors.
It is also the same as a D20 stud.
Another reason to remove the QT this way is to inspect the mounting boss
cast in the foot of the adapter. Many times they are broken, and probably not
worth the trouble of welding and retapping unless you can't easily find donor
QTs. You can also replace the gasket/RTV between the adapter and TH400
when you get that far later in the project.
Naturally, remove the Edrive indicator switch wire, and vacuum hoses for
Edrive vac motor, pull the emergency cable through after popping the clip that
holds it in place. Disconnect the exhaust clamp on the side of the QT if it is
still there.
Now with the truck chocked, xmember out of the way, tranny supported, all
linkages/wires/etc free from QT, pull rearward off of very long TH400 output
shaft. Use a tranny/floor jack to keep the QT level, and to save yourself the
struggle of lifting the xcase in a cramped space. Note how easily you could
crush/tear your new output TH400/input QT seals on re-assembly by allowing
the QT to become angled down and cocked on the TH400 output shaft.
It's not an absolute necessity to remove the xmember, but it gives you more
room, and you can scrape the inch of crud off of it while it's out.
I will mention here that the easiest way of all to reinstall the QT is to make up
some studs to guide the QT, and that will become obvious when pulling it out.
If you are steady enough with a floor jack, it isn't a big deal.

Drag it into daylight and prepare for the fun stuff.

As you can see from the drawings, the case splits in half, so start by locating
and removing the locating pins that are a press fit between the case halves
and knock them out. Go around the circumference of the case and remove all
of the bolts. It is normal for there to be some 1/2" and some 9/16" bolt heads
mixed around the case. They are also different lengths, but on re-assembly
you can see which logically go where.
Split the case in two, but don't do it by prying or jamming a screwdriver
between the halves, because the case is aluminum, and you will score the
sealing surfaces. I found that a rubber mallet helps. When it does come apart,
the two big sprockets that were captured by the case halves are now free to
drop out and chip teeth so be careful. The differential is probably heavier than
you'd expect, so caution there...
Now, hopefully you have two halves, one with low range if so equipped, a
chain, a drive sprocket and the driven differential where the QT voodoo takes
place.
Many of you ask when to replace your chain, and I really can't answer that as
it depends on the life your QT has led, as well as lube changes, etc. I *can*
generalize and say that after 100K miles, its beat. In short, if you don't
remember changing it, do it.

To satisfy our curiosity about how stretched is stretched in regard to the QT

chain, we measured several chains on QTs with varying miles, and found
what you would expect: chain wear although somewhat related to milage also
is determined by the beatings it took up to this point.
We measured from the center of the case to the center point of the chain
pushed up as tight as we could get it to measure play.
New chain____ Old chains_____
(****Insert exact measurements****)
If you got the seal kit and you want to replace your output shaft seals (and you
do...), take the large nut out of the yokes-this goes 100X easier with impact. If
you don't have access to air stuff at least rent an electric impact from the
Rent-All place near you, but be prepared for electric impact to be little more
help than saving time spinning nuts on and off.
Just in case you are new to power tools, DO NOT spin the case bolts into the
aluminum case with impact unless you love helicoils!
If you have to do it with hand tools, you have to secure the yoke in a vice and
get a BFP extension for leverage. Once the yokes are off, the shafts slip into
the cases and out. Now you can see where the seals press fit into the case
halves.
Not too bad so far, huh?
You want to go ahead and get the snap ring out of the groove so that your low
range will release and take the low range off of the back of the QT case half.
Now take off the shifter fork cover and try not to let poppet ball and spring
launch across the room when you remove e-clips from vac motor shaft and
pull vac motor out of shift fork pin end. DO NOT immerse vac motor in Kero!!!
Do not lose nylon wear points on shifter fork.
An interesting note is that some shift fork covers have a spring loaded valve
on them and others have a nipple for a vent hose. I haven't seen any rhyme or
reason for this, but would use the hose style with a looped vent hose if I had
the choice.
Now clean everything in a parts washer or at least a barrel of Kero, except for
the vac motor and differential. Dispose of Kero properly and if necessary,
reclean in a fresh batch to be sure. I like CRC Red brake cleaner after Kero,
and use that with the nozzle to ensure all roller bearings are completely
flushed out, then blast with compressed air to ensure all solvents are dried up.
Make sure to clean the oil supply hole cast in the case for sprocket lube.

If you wanted to
get nutty, you could always clean up the flashing on the inside of the case with
a die grinder to prevent stress cracks from forming which typically start in a
thin area. This is not necessary, but something to consider?
!!!!!!BEFORE!!!!!! we start into the center section you need to understand
that the wear surfaces in the differential are usually scalpel sharp. You cannot
overestimate the sharpness of the parts inside, or the care you should take.
Make another fresh Kero batch for the diff only. Take all of the 12pt capscrews
out of one end of the diff. Lay out the springs that look like big washers, brake
cones, etc in the order they came apart, repeat for the opposite side of the
differential.
Wash all parts thoroughly, you will find that a dull screwdriver and brass brush
will help you clean the gunk out of the crevices. The crevices that you see in
the end caps, and the recesses in the body of the diff itself where the brake
cones sit are there to allow the wear by product (shavings and QT fluid) to
accumulate so that it is kept off of the wear surfaces of the brake cones and
diff body.
Dry and prepare to inspect.
Before we inspect the parts, you first have to know what you are looking for.
Take a look at the first page of the PDF document you downloaded earlier.
You will see that the TH400 input shaft drives the drive sprocket, and the
chain spins the QT differential, which in turn drives the output shafts and
yokes. We are interested in the way this differential works.
Starting at the end cap facing toward the shifter fork side of the case, this end
cap serves three purposes: It serves as a bearing surface for the diff. It is
splined for Edrive "locked" mode, which by passes the differential function and
acts as a part time case when in 4wd. It applies pressure to the thrust washer
 underneath it and in turn to the Belleville springs/brake cone thrust washer
and the brake cone itself. Remember the test you did while the case was still
in the truck with a torque wrench? What you were testing was how much force
it takes to make the brake cone slip in the conical diff bore.
This pressure is a function of both how much force is generated by the end
cap and springs on the brake cone and also contact face area of the brake
cone and diff conical section. Obviously, a galled, pitted surface does not
have as much contact area as a new shiny smooth set.
Getting back to the end cap, you should inspect the splines or teeth on this
end of the diff, as well as the sliding ring controlled by the shift fork for E drive.
You can see that when DIS engaged, the rear output shaft is driven by the
splines in the brake cone and by the splines in the spider gears. HOWEVER,
when E drive is activated, the endcap, which is obviously bolted fast to the diff
body drives the rear output shaft by locking the endcap splines to the ring and
the ring to the output shaft.
Look for broken or chipped teeth on the endcap, slider ring and output shaft.
To avoid breaking them in the future, you can place a copper oil drain washer
underneath the Edrive light switch. What this will do is turn the light on later
when your slider ring is really set in place as opposed to being engaged by
half a tooth width, and under a load, which chips the teeth. FRANK ALMAAS
has some very clever QT mods that go further into solving the partial-
engagement problem.

I have taken notice that there are two styles of endcaps on this end of the QT
diff. One of the styles has an oiling hole cast between the teeth of the endcap
presumably to better oil the output shaft and slider ring. I'm not sure if the
drilled or undrilled was first, and how important it is in the big picture. I haven't
ever seen a drilled endcap break there, nor have I seen failure due to it NOT
being drilled, so take that for what it's worth.
 Inspect the thrust washer(s) and springs for galling, overheated (blue),
flatness. The thrust washers should be flat, and the springs slightly conical.
Later on re-assembly, you'll match up the spring height and pressure side to
side as best you can. The springs in the pic. above show two blued springs on
top and the bottom left is galled pretty badly. The one on the bottom right is
useable, but you can see galling. Nice ones look shiny with smooth wear
marks, and if you can catch an edge easily with your fingernail across the
face, it's galled.

Stripped out flattened splines on pic. above.

Check the splines on the inside of the brake cone. They should appear nice
and fat and have the same approximate depth as the output shaft (knowing
that the cone splines wear before the output shaft splines). They should not
appear flat, shallow, or extremely pointed or as concave waves along the
inside of the brake cone. This is probably where most of you are going to wish
 that you had extra parts. The pic. below shows nice splines, which is how all
inner splines should look.

If that doesn't get you, the second most likely area of wear is the outer surface
of the brake cone. It is also a good indicator of the kind of maintenance it's
had. Changing the QT fluid helps the diff innards stay nice. Look for
abnormally large ridges on the brake cone and it's diff mating surface. Look
for debris galled into surfaces, scoring, bluing, etc. DO NOT feel for ridges by
wiping finger parallel with diff inside or brake cone or you WILL get cut.
Moving across to the other side of the diff, it is a mirror image of the previous
side with the deletion of the Edrive slider. Take care to mark the direction of
the spider axle and where the spiders went to ensure assembly with
established wear patterns. Check also the splines of the gear that rides in the
brake cone.
Your ultimate goal when putting the diff. together is to have the two brake
cones requiring similar amounts of torque to slip. You can hold the diff. body
in a vice covered with thick rags as to not mangle the sprocket teeth. A round
jawed big pipe vice is best for this. Once secured, you can test the amount of
torque each side takes to slip.
To achieve this, you must have splines that are healthy throughout, smooth
brake cone surfaces that are tapered to match the diff body, and healthy
springs.
Luckily, not all diffs. fail for the same reason, and the parts are
interchangeable front to rear, so the front gear splines that usually wear can
be replaced with another diff's rear gear with good splines. The more you start
with parts wise, the better off you will be. This is also why it pays to do the
 torque test on junk yard QTs! Don't buy ANOTHER bad diff! (unless it's for
parts...)
Now we are down to reconditioning the center diff. This procedure is not
perfect, but unless you are going to offer a QT rebuild service, it is probably
not worth the time, effort, and expense to tool up and make jigs to do this the
"right" way in a machine shop environment. What this will do is restore the
posi action of the diff without breaking the bank AND you can do it at home.
I like to work with clean Kero while doing this part, so do the rough cleaning of
the diff parts and get some fresh stuff. Assuming that you now have enough
rebuildable parts in front of you, start with the diff body itself. The goal here is
to wind up with as smooth of a mating surface as you can get for the brake
cones. If the diff body is too trashed and scored from top to bottom badly, it's
probably unusable. Removing enough material to get to a smooth surface
would cause the brake cone to drop too far in toward the center of the diff
body, and leaving too much scored area will result in quick wear since the
brake cone will catch the edges and dig up both surfaces.
In other words you have to start with somewhat decent parts, although in a
pinch you have to use what you can get...

Take the diff body and with a small fine file dress the top edge of the brake
cone surface, which probably has a ridge that is extremely sharp. Take this
down even with the rest of the cone mating surface. The yellow arrow in the
pic. below indicates the ridge area.
Now get some fine emery cloth or wet-or-dry sandpaper and soak it in fresh
kero. You want to remove galling and polish the surface of the brake cone.
You also want to try to even out high spots, and not to create new ones.
Obviously any high spots are going to become the only wear points when
mated with the brake cones, and you will not get the kind of fit and friction you
want to produce the posi action.
 Were it not for the groove cut into the cone mating surface in the diff body
(see pic. above), one might try a cylinder hone with kero inside, but I think
your stones would break. Unless you have access to a machine shop, you are
going to do this by hand. You could check your progress by continually
measuring for out of round tolerance with a bore caliper, but I didn't get that
fancy about this. I polished the inner surface out with small circles, counting
circles in each area to keep the insides as even as possible. It's not rocket
science, check your fit of the brake cones when you get that far. At the end we
will lap the diff body and cones together to get the best fit you can by hand.
Got a better idea?
After repeating for the other side, take the brake cones and your small file and
where the contact face spirals down the side, dress off the sharp edges on the
top and bottom of the spiral caused by wear. I held the file at about a 45 deg
angle to the brake cones as I did this. Try not to reduce the width of the spiral
wear surface as you file-you want as much as possible. Just remove the sharp
edges. The pic. above shows the spirals. Don't file the shiny outer wear
surface!
Polish the outer wear surface of the cones again as evenly as possible with
the kero soaked paper. Don't cut yourself! On all surfaces, get as smooth of a
surface as you can. Don't worry about removing too much material, as it's only
fine paper. Use your judgement as to which grade paper or cloth to use to
start.
Once you have the diff body and brake cones filed and polished out, coat the
inside of one half of the diff body with appropriate grit valve compound (should
at this point be fine) and with the mating brake cone, fashion a lapping set up
with the output shaft and try to get the nicest seat possible. Clean and change
the compound out often as to not MAKE any new ridges. You will be able to
tell by cleaning off the grit if there are any obnoxious high spots. Don't expect
to see perfectly mating surfaces, you just don't want to see one small band
where it is touching and nothing else.
Once your cones are lapped into the diff body, you can begin to assemble the
thrust washers, springs, and end caps.
First clean everything again and coat liberally with QT fluid inside the diff, on
the brake cones, gears, etc.
All of the QT diffs I have seen were assembled with three conical Bellevue
springs and a thrust washer on each end. You may have to modify the spring
paks to get similar slip/grip on each end.
One indicator is the height of the spring pak measured with 3 in a stack from a
table surface to the top of the pak. However, this may not be accurate as
metal fatigue can play a part. (ie: The pak heights are similar but the spring
strengths are still different) Try first to use the paks the way you disassembled
them to keep wear patterns the same. This is not always possible, and isn't
much of an issue due to the highly polished, hard surface of the springs.
At this point, you must either mix and match with spare springs, use a thicker
thrust washer, or a combination thereof. Your goal here is to equally balance
the point of slip between the two ends, with the final result of 80-150 ft lbs.
with one end captured in a vice.
You could conceivably bias more to the rear or front axle by adjusting
pressures in the diff cap, but we didn't get that crazy. What we *DID* do,
however was to increase spring pressures to see what the result would be. In
 my J20 we set the spring pressures to slip at 150 ft lbs. In Zack's Cherokee,
we set the pressure to an estimated 200 ft lbs. or more, which errs on the side
of trail worthiness, and not street manners. Unless your rig is driven off-road
often, we don't suggest going higher than 150 ft lbs.
The results were that my J20 has an ever so slight sticking of the brake cones
when doing tight maneuvers like in a parking lot, which by all accounts seems
normal. Zack's Cherokee on the other hand has a moderate stick slip on right
angle pull-outs from a stop. It's nothing major, and the Chero is unstoppable
off-road. However, folks used to a car type ride will definitely object.
Use your judgement as to setting your pressures. Keep in mind that the
rougher your wear surfaces/more out-of-round, the more your pressure will
drop when the new set up wears in.
Now you are ready to reassemble your reconditioned diff into your nice clean
cases with new seals and gaskets.
You did flush your low range unit out, right? Also it goes without saying that
doing all of this without replacing the chain is really stupid...
Reassembly is the same as dissasembly in reverse order, all I can offer here
is to coat everything liberally with QT fluid, don't forget the mating surface of
the seals so they don't spin dry at first, don't forget any small parts like the
poppet ball and spring, and the fiber thrust washer for the sprocket.
I am a big believer in NOT using RTV for everything. However this is one of
the times when you definitely want to. I tried reassembling a QT without
gooping everything up with RTV and just using the paper gaskets with Brush
Tack. Due to the forces on the aluminum case and the fine machine work
(ahem) my QT seeped fluid slightly around the case halves. Definitely goop
this up with RTV as well as the adapter junction and the TH400 gasket.
The TH400 gasket may not come with your rebuild kit, but the pattern on the
back of the TH400 is the same in every application that I have ever seen, so
ask for the TH400 gasket before the tail section of your favorite GM car and
you will have the right one.
Remember to change the QT fluid after break in period to remove any wear
particles from diff parts wearing back in together. We did this after about 500
miles.
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