JL/JK Pinion Spacers & XL Pinion Tools

If you’ve worked on Jeep JK or JL diffs before, you’ve seen their funky CV driveshafts and odd pinion yokes. Since the driveshaft end sits inside the “cup” of it, a normal pinion tool won’t sit flat on the surface. It’ll sit on the outside cup lip, but then you’re tightening down on a small surface that is offset from the mounting bolts. This could cause the tool to slip when torquing down the pinion nut, or distortion to the tool and bolts.

In order to mount the pinion tool securely to the yoke, we’ve developed a spacer made from billet aluminum- CNC milled to provide a beautiful and smooth finish. You simply stick this spacer in the pinion yoke “cup”, and feed 2 mounting bolts through your pinion tool and into the yoke. Tighten them down and you now have a ton of surface area between the pinion tool and yoke. You can crank down the mounting bolts as much as you need to without distortion to the pinion tool or marring the lip of the yoke.

Shifting gears a bit, we’ve also just finished up making some new XL pinion tools! These things are massive…our good friend and customer Paul at Stratemann Automotive -who bought the first one- said he thought it was a tennis racket for a sec! We got a kick out of that one.

These were designed using dimensions from a 2020 Sierra 2500 rear AAM 11.5. You can see the original model 4Link4WD Large pinion tool above up against this giant pinion flange, and it doesn’t even come close to fitting. So, we’ve solved this problem with the XL version. We anticipate this will also work well for some heavy duty truck differentials but we need to continue doing research to confirm fitment and applications.

So, if either of these tools look useful for your garage or shop, they’re available! As always, we pride ourselves in quick shipping times so you can enjoy your new tools when you need them.