limited slip diifferential gear change??

[cnatsu1]

I've be looking and couldn't find much. Never worked on a diff before. Happened to find a limited slip diff in a 87 ram 50 at the junk yard the other day and pulled it. I'd seen some articles here on doing a swap and thought it would be a nice upgrade. Well, got it dirty and took it to the local tranny shop to have them clean it. They told me I had to make sure it was the same gear ratio or it wouldn't work. Guess that's common sense, but I don't remember that from the articles I looked at.

Long story short, my diff and the new one have different tooth counts. I don't know how to tell what the ratio is. My original differential has 38 teeth and the limited slip diff has 43. How hard is it to swap out the gears? My Haynes manual wasn't any help. Is this something I can do with regular tools (no press). My truck is an 88 4x4 2.6l. Need some advice as to the best course of action. Thanks in advance.

[cnatsu1]

Finally found the answer to my own question, but please let me know if you have additional info or another article. It's about 2/3 the way down the page once you click on the link.

http://www.mightyram50.net/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=267&sid=c950154829dddddfeefbb0a5d3a1d1c4&start=10

[camoit]

Wow you found that in the archive. I didn't know that was on there. But it looks corect.

[cnatsu1]

Update, I bought a clamping dial indicator at hft that had good reviews and used it to set up my diff per the previous link and directions. Pretty sure it came out good, didn't hear any whine when I drove it back to the tranny shop. It took several times of trial and error to get the backlash right. It kept changing when I tightened the bolts down. Had to have the bolts a little loose to adjust the side bearing nut with the needlenose pliers. Reused the pinion spacer bearing that was in it originally, rattle gunned it down little by little until the play was out of the pinion. Didn't have a dial inch pound torque wrench so guesstimated on how tight to take it. Got some prussian blue at Napa to check the contact pattern which looked good. Mostly struggled with getting the backlash right once everything was torqued down. Filled it with a small bottle of limited slip additive and the cheapest synthetic 75w-90 gear oil I could find.

http://www.harborfreight.com/clamping-dial-indicator-93051.html