I am finally putting together a Dana 60 for my charger out of a truck and I finally got my tubes cut and new ends welded on so I brought it to my guy to set up the gears and he called me and said the pinion bearing race has .009 clearance and it looks like the race spun in the case. I was told JB weld the race in but the guy setting it up said he didn't really want to do it that way. He said he found a race with the same inside measurement and a little larger on the outside and can have a guy machine the housing for the larger race. Going to cost me $200 to have it machined to fit the new race. Seems like this would be a better way to do the job correctly. What does Moparts think?

Spend the Money and fix it right...JB weld is NOT the answer.(seldom is)
which of the two pinion bearings is it?

Theres a lot of force on the pinion race and bearing. You want that to remain as true as possible to keep pinion gear deflection down as low as possible. .010 is to much slop and JB weld will be to Soft of fix. Fine maybe for a street car, and I mean Street as in just a driver.

But for a performance build do the correct fix. Also, how are the carrier races, seen them egg shaped and blown out.

I would say have it done, you got time and money in it now ,why junk it when it is salvageable and nobody will ever know.

Spend the money and fix it right, JB weld is not the fix.

With that much clearance I'm going to guess you bought this housing stripped down already , otherwise that bearing race would have just fallen out of the case when you flipped it over to remove it.

I say fix it right. If it spins, gets hot, and locks up the rearend at speed it will be money well spent. Things can get UGLY real fast.

I agree. Do it right, and you will sleep well too.

Machining the housing IS the right way to fix it. Get the part number of the new bearing so that if you need one down the road, you will have a reference.

I would throw that housing away and get a known good one to start with New or used Not many machine shops out there will be able to get the new center of the bearing race machined correclty in relation to the other one
Good luck

I'm betting the other way. Most machine shops now can get the tolerances closer than that factories did 30 years ago. These machines in the right hands are crazy accurate. Maybe that's why it spun.

.. you lost enough already in this housing..
buy another... cheaper in the long run

I am having it machined. Hopefully it's done correctly. I have to much in to the housing already having the main caps fitted and having it narrowed and welded. The guy setting it up really stressed on the force on the bearing and race was to much in a race car for jb weld.

Indexing for the proper center isn't a problem these days. No different than a proper line bore, lifter indexing or any other block work, just on a smaller piece.

How good were these housings machined back then? I would say there was a good deal of tolerance on a mass produced housing anyway. Be a good time to really blueprint that housing to exact specs.

The Dana housing that I built for the Ramcharger had that issue and it was machined by the differential shop that assembled that one with the spool. They do a lot of race car diffs.

The Dana that I built for the Daily Driver had already been overhauled properly so all I had to do there was to cut one tube and shorten and respline one axle. All the bearings and brakes were new and it came with 4.10s and a PowerLock.

If the bore is not physically out of round then machine power or manually knural the bore and install the race with sleeve seal.This can be done for less than $50.If you machine for a different race record that race p/n on the housing for future rebuilds.

The guy I have set up my gears is very picky about his work and doesnt want me to have a problem down the road. I looked into all the different loctite race adhesives and primers. I also talked to a very reputable person on here and they said to just used JB weld put some on both mating surfaces of the race and housing and I wouldn't have any problems. The new race is coming on Friday and hopefully it will be done by the end of the weekend.