Installing 3.73's in my Duster and finally was able to get a pattern today, what say you?

On the second try hit this pattern which looks pretty sweet.

Backlash is .005 which is right at the bottom of the allowable range for an 8.25" Chrysler rear (.005-.008)

My first rear axle gear change without using factory tools, nice to be able to do them at home and made most of the tools too boot! I'll post a picture of them later today, most were made from scrap metal from work.

Car run on the lift, sounds great! Road test in 10 minutes.

Pinion is too deep. Needs a thinner pinion shim. Points on the end of the foot ball pattern are to close to the root of the tooth. Look here, it will show you a better look at patterns than any servive manual.
https://www.yukongear.com/manuals.aspx
Doug

Perfect may not be possible. You could loosen the BL to 7-8 and check again. That shouldn't cost much time.

open up the BL .005 is tight and will howl on coast, take it out toward 0.008, you can almost do that by only taking the cover plate off, easy

Actually final BL came out at .008 after installing the crush sleeve.

Factory states .005-.008, Motive Gear states .007-.009. I went with what the gear vendor stated.

DVW maybe correct (the picture is slightly deceptive as the line where the grease builds up at the root isn't at the bottom) as I have some noise after a long road test.

Going to take a break for now as I'm a little burned out from all the projects of late.