they messed that up

 

in today's economy i'm sure the dealers are struggling not to loose money, but this is one time it sounds like they should to honor their service departments work. i would go talk to the management at the dealership and try to get this resolved. if that doesn't get anywhere, try good old anger management

 

I was thinking about this again and wondered if you meant 'shims' above?

If so, they are wrong. If you have a Dana style axle, there are certainly shims in there. I know this first hand as I changed out the 4.10 gears in a '99 Super Duty to 3.73 gears for a 'customer' in school last year. The shims are the only way to get the proper set up on the gears so the ring and pinion gears mesh properly. I don't know all other designs; but, I can't imagine how else to accomplish this. As a final check (After complete re-assembly) the ring gear is 'painted' with gear checking compound and ran around by hand. The pinion makes marks in the compound as it touches the ring gear and that pattern is 'read' to see if several alignments are correct. If they did this correctly, the axle should have ran for hundreds of thousands of miles. (My boy just bought a '96 with 300,k on it and the rear axle is silent and nice and tight. This truck has pulled a goose neck horse trailer a lot . . . )

I have to wonder how a newer truck like this with under 100,k miles is having this many troubles. Why did the first set of gears fail? Then this set fails almost immediately? Like I said above, if you didn't abuse this axle there is no reason for this to happen. So, if you didn't: Either - 1) they installed it incorrectly or 2) there is some other defect here that has been missed. I have to wonder if the axle housing isn't bent or has some other defect. If it is a defect then it should fall under the original warranty I would think (Even though it is past that warranty period. If it has had this defect since new then it should be a factory warranty problem.)

What have you found out on this and what has been done?