[arrabil]

There are two pinion bearings. Both got pressed off. Even if you did the outer with a hammer, it was still pressed off. So if you only replaced the inner because you didn't have a 5" bearing remover, but reused the outer because its pressed on via the pinion nut...

How did you check your pattern? What did you use to rotate the gears?

When you say you used a ft-lb torque wrench, you understand this has to be performed with a "beam-type" torque wrench, yes? Its not the "click-type". You're not measuring the tightness of the nut. You're measuring the tightness of the pinion rotation. How "tight" the bearing is squeezed against the case in essence. They call it bearing preload. There is no way to measure this with a regular clicker torque wrench.

In fact, the pinion nut is tightened to 250-300 ft-lbs before the bearing preload even begins to move from 0. And then it often moves from 0 to 15 in-lbs (or whatever is appropriate) within a quarter turn of the nut. Once the crush sleeve begins to crush the correct preload is achieved so quickly many first timers need to do it again with a second crush sleeve.

I really do hope your gears are fine. But I tend to think you will be doing it again within the next 25K miles. Your bearing preloads, what makes them last a long time, shouldn't be right even if the pattern is.

My only problem is that while you do say you're no expert, you're advocating a methodology which is totally wrong. That gives hope to others where there shouldn't be any. You got lucky, maybe. But it doesn't mean anyone else will win the lottery. And what you're suggesting is possibly dangerous. Improperly setup gears could go bad on the highway and cause a loss of vehicle control. So better to give people the right details than to give them false hope.

EDIT: There is also nothing wrong with pressing the bearing off and on the pinion a dozen times. Thats generally how the home mechanic figures out the right shim settings. The right tools are required though like you said.