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Hi guys. As some of you may have read I had my OEM diff fail about two weeks ago. I bought a newly reassembled 4.77 Diff from member Scot for $700 and a two hour drive out to him. I had Fairfield transmission install the differential into the car for $300. As soon as I picked up the car it had the whine normally associated with gearing changes.
The problem is that the noise quickly progressed to getting louder and louder, and into more of a mechanical rub/chatter type noise now to the point where I can't here the radio over it. As soon as the noise started to increase I brought the car back to Fairfield transmission.
They called me today and told me the noise is indeed coming from inside the Diff. They believe the diff is not misaligned internally and that the pinion may be the main cause. The car is now undrivable

My problem is I now have 2 diffs that are unusable and my daily driver stuck on a lift. What do you guys think I should do? I need to minimize downtime because the car is my only mode of transportation and need to minimize $ because well, I'm a broke college kid lol. Are there any shops in North NJ who could rebuild the OEM differential for the time being? Sorry for the long post just need to get this squared away ASAP.

 

Have you talked to Scot?

 

i got a good used diff w 35k on it i would just need a working core. dont care if it makes noise as long as it drives. 200 plus paypal and shipping

 

Thanks guys, I've been in contact with Scot and we're trying to resolve this issue. He's been very helpful. My biggest problem is that I can't even drive the car so I need to get some type of working diff in there before I can even move forward. As for swapping diffs with you Bugs I may be returning this one to Scot. I'm not sure what you're intentions are but you wouldn't want to put this differential in your car as it sits.

 

You know, it sounds to me that the shop filled the diff with the wrong fluid. If it sounded ok and got bad that fast, only the fill could have really caused the wear.

 

Was there def fluid in the thing in the first place?

 

It is illegal to ship them filled, so the shop should have filled it when it was installed.at the very least, they should have check it just to cover their own @$$.

 

Yeah that's what I thought (legallity issue) and I would of thought the guys in the shop wouldn't of made that mistake.... but it's a area just to make sure. There wouldn't be a legallity issue about getting the diff fixed if the garage didn't fill the thing with fluid??

 

I have driven a car with an empty diff. I was the isntaller and I forrgot to fill it. Now it was my car, so I was the only one to blame. I got about 3 miles from the house that the tires locked up. i had to tow the car home.

I took the diff back to the installer (gear installer) and we replaced the bearing and reset the gear and it ran like a champ from that day forward.

 

The fluids were all to spec so the only thing I can really think of is that some of the internals of the differential may have been slighlty misaligned during the gear installation?