Dana 44 Lock-Right Installation

By The Boss

This is a fairly easy install, once the carrier is out. See the Dana 44 Axle Seal Replacement Tech Article for instructions regarding removing the carrier from the differential housing. Keep the bearing races oriented with the correct side of the carrier.

Take note of the roll-pin holding the cross-pin in place. You will be removing this pin later.

The Dana 44 carrier setup is of an interference design. That means you need to remove the ring gear, regardless of gear ratio, in order to remove the cross-pin. The cross-pin is what holds the spider gears in place. Carefully place the carrier in a vise and be sure that you do not get the bearings between the jaws. With my vise, I had enough room to grab the carrier itself and just cleared the bearings by 1/4". Clean part of the carrier and ring gear edge and place a mark across the two with a good marker so that you can seat the ring gear back in the same position. I used an impact wrench to break the ring gear bolts loose. If you do not have air, these should take some effort to remove as they have thread locker on them.

Once all the ring gear bolts have been removed, use a screwdriver between the ring gear bevel and carrier flange and twist. I suggest padding the top of the vise so that the falling ring gear will not be damaged. I had some small cardboard boxes that I used. Remove from vise.

Now its time to remove the roll-pin. I started with the allen wrench in the pic, but ended up finding a larger one that just fits in the hole and I used my grinder to hackoff the short bent portion. This left me with a 4" long hex drive that barely fits the roll-pin hole. It took several good whacks with a large ball peen hammer to drive the roll-pin out. The c-clip version of the D44 uses a bolt to hold in the cross-pin.

Once the roll-pin is out, you will need to drive the cross-pin out of the carrier. It is tight, but does not take a lot of effort.

Once the cross-pin is out, remove the spider gears. You can then push the side gears out. Do not forget to remove the thrust washers on the side gears. These will be reused unless damaged or cracked. There are also some cupped washers that were under the spider gears. Remove these, they will not be reused, but save them and the side/spiders as the Lock-Right does have a 2 year warranty and you can reinstall them if you have to.

Here are the parts to the Lock-Right. For this install, you only need the parts bag (shear pins and springs), coupler (top) and driver (bottom). The c-clip retainers (cups) are not used. I also purchased a hardened cross-pin, it was an extra $20.

To begin the assembly, you need to apply some medium weight grease to both sides of the thrust washers, the teeth of the couplers and drivers, as well as in the small holes in the drivers. Also, fill the small oval "window holes" in the drivers with grease. This will be used to hold the pins and springs in place during assembly. There are two window holes on each driver, on opposite sides. Slide the shear pins into the small holes on the face of the driver that have a window hole. You should end up with 2 pins pushed in flush with each driver. You can see a shear pin (not pushed in all the way) in the window hole in the second pic down.

Assemble the spings. Apply some grease to the larger springs and slide the smaller ones inside. THe grease should help hold it all together.

Place the thrust washers on the back of the couplers (side gears) and install into the carrier. Place the driver halves together, teeth out. Slide the drivers into the carrier. You may need to place one half at a time.

Now comes the fun part of installing the springs. I have heard this can be a pain the rear, but it went smoothly for me. Line up the drivers as best as possible. Using a small flat screwdriver, slide the shear pins from the window into the other driver. You may need to "wiggle" the other driver to get the holes to align. Slide all 4 pins over, 2 going left to right and 2 going right to left. Then, insert a spring set into the window hole and carefully compress it with the screwdriver to fit it into the hole. It should seat nicely behind the shear pin and be completely below the edge of the driver.

Hopefully you didn't think that you could install the cross-pin to make things easier. While you could probably still get the window holes to install the springs, it may make it more difficult and hard to get to the windows. Install the cross-pin, making sure to carefully align the roll-pin hole to the carrier. Tap the cross-pin into the carrier and when the hole is nearly in the carrier, use a small center punch or pin to finish aligning the holes. Tap the cross-pin until flush with the carrier. Inspect the alignment of the holes. Install roll-pin.

Finally, place the ring gear lossely onto the carrier. Place the assembly into the vise, careful of the bearings again. Turn the ring gear until the marks you made line up. Using three ring gear bolts, in a triangle pattern, pull the ring gear onto the carrier. Install the remaining bolts using the thread locker and torque to 55 ft-lb. Install the rear gear bolts in a star pattern to avoid warping anything. Remove the three bolts originally installed to seat the ring gear, apply thread locker and torque to spec. Reinstall carrier and axles according to the other articles referenced on the first page. Test locker operation according to the manual.