Ring and pinion gears wore out. My mechanic can't seem to get replacements for them from Honda. 7", 4.10 ratio. Any suggestions of where to get replacement ring and pinion gears?

I'm a new user, so forgive me if this is already in a thread somewhere, but my searches didn't yield any helpful info.

 

puddymod. if youre replacing them, upgrade. 4.56 gears were hands down the best money i ever spent on my s2000.

https://puddymodracing.wordpress.com/honda-options/

 

Puddymod is great for rebuilding them and knows a ton about them. You may ask him about leadtime. I believe it can get quite long sometimes.

 

What were your symptoms? Was car abused before you got it?

These parts rarely fail on these cars. Really never unless abused or boosted.

 

Well outright failure is not uncommon, but more so from hard use and the crush sleeve failing, which then results in catastrophic failure of the ring and pinion (and can damage a lot more of the diff including the case). But yeah have not seen much in terms of just them wearing out normally.

 

Thanks for your response. I had read about puddymod in other threads, but had the wrong, probably old, email address for him, so thanks for this link. Regarding the 4.56 gears...I drive primarily street, but sometimes "sportingly" on mountain roads. going to a higher gear ratio like that will make the car run at higher revs while cruising on the highway (I have to drive over an hour just to get to a decent road to have fun on). Do you not find that to be annoying or a problem?

 

Thanks for asking. Symptom was a whining sound on acceleration, even very light acceleration. It was getting louder and louder. Mechanic disassembled it and said the teeth are worn in a not-good way. Is it possible I might have thrown things off by jacking up the car by the diff?

I don't know anything about the first owner of the car and how he drove it, but the car does not appear to have been abused based on its appearance (though that could be misleading I suppose).

Thoughts?

 

The diff is the center jacking point so I do not think that is the cause here.

Could be that it was never serviced at all and was running original oil in it. I mean, LOTS of people simply never change anything but motor oil and most times stuff still lasts a long time but that could be part of it, especially if they tracked it, drove it hard, launched it hard a lot, etc.

If doing anything that requires launching hard on this car with sticky tires (some autox courses, drag racing) then due to the low tq of our engine, you are pretty much launching at 6000 rpm and releasing the clutch fast. So if that was done a lot then that may be part of it.

I guess as well, if someone ever tore into it and had to rebuild the diff for any reason, and did a poor job of setting pinion depth (especially possible if they went to a solid sleeve instead of the crush collar and spaced it poorly) then that would put extra wear on the gears. Hard to say at this point though.

 

Ok,symptoms align with diagnosis, so no worries mechanic is blowing smoke, which was my concern.

 

Thanks for your concern and responses. I appreciate you. I have a long relationship with my mechanic and the shop has an outstanding reputation in the community (Bothwell Automotive in Torrance, CA). Still, it's nice to get corroboration from others.