Whenever I slow down without a load on the drivetrain (neutral or clutch depressed), I hear a clicking noise. If i put the car in gear and engine brake or accelerate, it immediately goes away. It is more pronounced at slower speeds, since i'm assuming it just becomes an inaudible hum at higher speeds. I was able to watch the wheel, and it clicks about 4 times for every wheel rotation, which means it is most likely once ever driveshaft rotation. I got under the car and rotated the driveshaft back and forth by hand. There is play at both the tranny end as well as the diff end, but I have nothing to compare it to in order to see if it's excessive or not. From reading other posts, a couple of people have had similar noises, and had a mechanic tell them the diff is bad. If there is a repeated clicking like that, what is it that's actually wrong? I just bought the car a couple of weeks ago, and the previous owner said this diff is a new OEM unit that is only a few months old. If the backlash was set wrong, it should just click once as the gears make contact going from an acceleration to deceleration state. I'm not sure what would cause this non-loaded repeated clicking. Anybody have any suggestions on what to look for, or what the cause of this clicking might be, or if it's normal and i'm just not used to it since this is a new car for me? Thanks!

Nick

 

Since we have 4.10 final drive gears, it almost sounds like you have a chipped tooth on the ring gear. For every 4 turns of the pinion gear, the ring gear turns once.
Pull the diff drain plug and see if there is a piece of gear stuck on the magnet.

 

I'll definitely check that... I'm planning on changing the tranny and diff oil next weekend anyway. Not to argue your theory, but if it's clicking 4 times per wheel rotation, wouldn't it be a pinion gear chipped tooth instead of the ring gear, since a chipped ring gear tooth would only see contact once per wheel rotation?

 

You're right. It's the pinion. I got confused.

 

Well, the clicking noise turned into a whining noise, then a screaming noise, then a massive clunk with every driveshaft rotation (all over a period of about 60 miles). It's so bad I was afraid it was going to crack the diff case in half if I went any faster than 5 mph. As soon as I find a diff to swap in, I'm going to rip this one apart, and figure out what happened.

 

Whining, screaming, clunking? Sounds similar to some failures associated with the wrong fluid. Maybe when when the diff was replaced?

 

And the winner is.... xviper! I tore it apart today and posted some pictures at https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.ph...&f=22&t=282101 I have a feeling it was missing part of one pinion tooth for a while, but now it's missing part of 5 or 6 teeth.