Hey - I have no knowledge of car mechanics (I have a brilliant mechanic, in return for giving him money, our cars run perfectly....) - if you dont have a mechanic you know and trust to do a dignosis, then
Why not run it till it dies, then you will know which bit is faulty....crude faultfinding, but it works.
noise, so why worry about it until the vehicle stops?
Because, at the moment, its generating endless mental grief for you .......out of all proportion to the severity of the fault...
I used to have a 1998 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab 4x4. Great truck, but I traded it because of the infamouse "rear end whine". The irony is the whine didn't start untill I changed the rear end oil. I used the Dodge factory oil and the additive, but the rear end went from quiet to pissing me off real quick. Only 60K miles when it started. Get on some of the Dodge truck forums. You will find the Dodge rear ends are prone to develop the rear end whine. Most say even a professional rear end rebuild will not make the noise go away! Just something about the Dodge rear ends. Now drivin' a powerful, made in Canton Miss., Nissan Titan! With Dana axles! Greg
I went to a dealer today. Drove it with a mechanic, etc and he raised the pickup and listened with stethoscope.
The problem is rear end related and he will replace the pinion bearing and other internal bearings. In his opinion the gears are fine.
The cost of this, including cost of the "diagnostic", which they waived, is $1070 and I decided to let them do it and instead I will resell something on ebay to make up the money. The labor charge is $600, the rest are parts.
An inquire was made about A Dodge truck and to this I say: Iggy: Have you changed the tranny fluid since you purchased the truck? How about the previous owner? Put in A half can of Trans-Tune and drive it for A week than have the tranny flushed and the filter changed. A friendly mechanic with access to Alldata or Mitchell On Line could look up any service bulletins for you or check with your local library. In the Twin Cities area the libraries have an Alldata subscription that can be searched for free. Perhaps this is true for your area also. If you determine the tranny is toast, and you can do your own work, A rebuilt unit for most vehicles won't cost much more than one or two car payments and as long as your frame and body are in good shape it would be well worth keeping the old girl. My '95 F-150 is approaching the 200K mark and if the drive train starts to go I will replace what I have to in order to run it until I retire in 7 years. My old daily driver was A 1979 Dodge D-100 Power Wagon that I still own and plow snow with. I also haul scrap iron with her even though she looks like A rolling scrap pile! I just replaced the rear springs last fall and would replace the engine,tranny/transfer case or rear or front diff if I had to. As long as I can do the work myself.Labor cost's are the real wallet killer. Good Luck! H.R.
We just got rid of a 1998 Ram 3500B stretch extended van, that may or may not have a similar drive train as your truck. (5.9 L engine, auto trans). The transmission croaked at something like 89000 Miles, and they rebuilt it for ONLY $3100! We did get a "lifetime" warranty on the rebuild, so if it ever blew AGAIN, we'd be covered.
Having had major transmission problems on our last THREE American-brand cars in a ROW, I've pretty well sworn them off. Meanwhile, I'm still driving my 1989 Toyota Corolla station wagon with manual transaxle. Maintenance on that one has run about $100/year, on average. Some years it requires ZERO maintenance whatsoever. 170,000 miles on the original wter pump, alternator, the A/C refrigerant has NEVER been even topped-up, etc.
It ought to be possible to isolate grinding noises to the transmission or rear axle. Any way you can jack the rear wheels off the ground? If it is the transmission, you are in deep DOO-DOO, and he's definitely right, if you can in good conscience dump the thing, do so.
If it is the axle, then I really don't see how some grinding in there is going to take the transmission with it.
Jon, it is in the axle. The dealer offered a relatively sensible total price of $1070 (that includes the $114 that they charged me to look at it), so I decided to just have them do it.
They were in the 2500 and 3500's until 2002. With the new 2003 body also brought American Axles. 1500's mostly use the the 9.25 corporate axle. Good axle, bad bearings. Chevrolet has also had lots of problems with their
================== There appears to be no technology so mature that some suit can't take a few cents out and turn the product into pure crap.
Didn't the suits ever read the Midas story? You are suposed to turn things into *GOLD*, not crap.....
AFAIK the DANA corporation is operating under chapter 11 also. Unka George (George McDuffee) ............................. I sincerely believe . . . banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. Thomas Jefferson (1743?1826), U.S. president. Letter, 28 May 1816, to political philosopher and Senator John Taylor
It's not too hard if you know what you are doing....
The axles must be removed so......
the gears can be removed, in order to.....
set the pinion depth and pinion bearing preload.........
which requires special tools.
Even if you felt confident enough to use the "+" or "-" markings on the pinion gear to set the depth. you really STILL need the pinion to spin freely to set and correctly measure the bearing preload with an inch-pound torque wrench.....
and you cannot do that while the ring gear is meshed with the pinion gear......
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