This is belaboring a point, but... unless you decelerate just exactly as
much as you accelerate, your car is going to remain in motion ;). While
deceleration torque through the differential is vastly outweighed by
acceleration and steady-state torque (to overcome wind resistance at
speed), you will, over the life of the car, accumulate thousands of
miles of 'coasting', and, if you do The Right Thing and leave the clutch
engaged while you're doing coasting or decelerating, then that will
definitely put some wear on the back side of the ring and pinion gears.
Not that there's anything wrong with that... it's just not designed to
take big loads for a long time in that direction. Freewheeling the
pinion gear, or even the transmission when it's in neutral, isn't a big
load.
On the 'marking the driveshaft and pinion' thing: As Mayf points out,
driveshafts are balanced as a single piece, without the U-joints in
place, and the pinion shaft is similarly balanced by itself. Marking the
relative positions of the two is not so you don't accidentally try to
reassemble them 180 degrees out of position... it's so dimwits don't try
to put it back together 90 degrees out of position. The fact that
nothing lines up when they try that doesn't seem to stop some folks.
Best regards,
Theo Smit
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