3rd member talk (ring&pinion setup etc.)

[Ivan141]

The term work hardens refers to metal parts that have wearing surfaces, like the ring and pinion gear teeth. Microscopic irregularities get pushed back due to the rubbing and over time this compacts the outer molecular structure a bit (hardening it). I dont see how this applies to a crush collar.

That being said I do think that correctly setting a new crush collar should be possible (first-time right). Maybe the bearings arent seated completely when this goes wrong. Having looked into this I guess you could reuse the crush collar if your really carefull not to re-crush it during installation. But when you use new bearings you can be sure that they will have different tolerances, so the old setting of the crush collar might not be correct anymore.
I read up about tapping both ends of the pinion with a hammer after setting the crush collar to make sure the bearings are seated correctly... if the preload is off after that you could re-set the preload and be done with it.