Yeah a good winter tear down is a great time killer, good time to upgrade stuff if you want to as well. Wow, 2 gallons I would have never thought they could go that long between tear downs, this upgrade gets better and better.

I got the diffs in the mail today! They were quite cold sitting in the mail box, but after playing with them a little I noticed the pinion slop they have. I never really noticed that before in diffs. There is a slight bit of fluid around the pinion bearing, is there fluid in the housing too or is that just some grease slipping past the o ring? I'm still waiting on the shims to come, but I got the 4909 pinions already. I'll post some pics of the size difference in size between the E Maxx pinions and the T Maxx ones when I get it apart.

Hey guys, posted this as an update on my big block build thread, but thought I'd post it here too for those seeking info in the future. I got my 6x8x.2mm shims and set to work on the diffs. I put the 4909 T Maxx pinions in, and started with 1 shim. To my surprise, 1 shim made the diffs too tight. I removed it and re assembled the diff. With no shims it actually felt fine. Just a hair of play in and out on the pinion, and almost no slop felt when I turned it and held the ouput shafts still. It went this way for both of the new diffs. In comparison, my old Pro .15 diffs that came out of the truck had a fair amount of play and slop. Strange, it seems I got a really tight set of diffs I did have to shim the outside quite a bit though. The 4909 pinions are a few mm longer than the E Maxx ones are. I ended up getting some 6mm ID washers from the hardware store and using those in conjunction with my diff shims. I used the smaller diff shims against the outer pinion bearings to space the larger washers away from the bearing. Without the smaller shims, the larger washers would contact the outer edge of the bearing instead of just the inner rotating part. With everything tight on the outside, the gears still felt quite nice so I'll leave it like this and check it out next winter to see if they wear in at all and need shimming then.

Here are a few pics, one is of the E Maxx diff with the 4909 pinion installed next to the old Pro .15 one, there's also a pic of the longer 4909 pinion next to the E Maxx one and of the shimming done on the outside of the pinion. Good amount of info here for anybody looking to upgrade a non extended Maxx to the newer style sealed diffs. What I did allows the use of any old style center shafts and requires no grinding on them for fitting. This mod also applies to the newer 4907/4908 3.3 T Maxx diffs as they share the same exact pinion shaft as the E Maxx diffs do. Great and fairly inexpensive upgrade for anybody using the older style un-sealed diffs. The E Maxx diffs fit perfectly in my bulkheads, too. The oil in the new diffs makes the diffs feel more like a posi diff than the old grease filled ones did, so I think it will help a lot in cornering and off road driving too!