If your pinion has side to side play, you should be leaking fluid everywhere. Are you?
On a new install, 160 ft. lbs. of torque is what you would tighten your front pinion nut to. Unless you removed your pinion nut in the past, there should be no reason why it would come loose.
There is no fluid leaking. I just noticed the play while I have been trying to locate a clanking sound from somewhere in the front end. I yanked the front driveshaft back and forth and saw the play in the yoke in relation to the pinion shaft. I hope this is only a matter of tightening the pinion nut.
As for the clank sound, I am going to check the torque on the front wheel spacers, since I cannot find anything else in front after spending about 15 minutes yanking on everything I could think of.
Torque it down and hope for the best. You'll need a yoke holder. As far as your question regarding turning resistance, I'm pretty sure it's 22-35 inch pounds for proper spec, but that can only be accurately measured with axles and carrier removed. It's extremely sensitive.
Yeh, the funny thing, QuicksilverJK and I were testing this, but with wheels on but off the ground since his rig had the transmission out. We were reading about 35 inch pounds on average. With his gearing so close to mine, looks like around 30-35 inch pounds makes sense. And yes, it is very sensitive, in that it was 50 inch pounds to get the stream moving along and then the average above.
Also, do you happen to know if your ProRock 44 was assembled with a crush sleeve eliminator?
I am not sure and am going to call Dynatrac tomorrow to find out if their build sheet has that information on it. I really did not get a single sheet of paper from ORE when I picked up the vehicle.
Thank you guys so much! HUGE help!