Anyone ever had their E Lock rear diff go bad?

Anyone ever had their E Lock rear diff go bad? When I say go bad, I mean horrible noises and lack of movement from the rear wheels. Mine shelled out yesterday on my 07 TRD 4x4.

I wasnt wheeling hard, just out checking my pastures. I was actually trying to not rip my grass up when I was going through this ditch and it started to slip in 4 hi. I put it in N, turned the switch to 4Lo and engaged my rear e lock. Waited for the lights to stop flashing and tried to drive out. It moved for a second and "POP" all sorts of clattering and chattering started happening. Stopped and took it out of e-lock, waited for the lights to go solid and more clattering. So at this point I called a buddy (with a Blue Oval, who is not letting me forget this) to come pull me out. Got it out of the ditch and sure enough, it wont pull it self with its rear wheels any longer and very bad noises.

So the long and the short of it is, its loaded on the trailer and headed to the dealership in the morning. I have 56,000 miles on the clock and I hope my powertrain warranty picks this one up. Any one out there have anything similar happen? Also any experiences with the dealer on getting it fixed? I am really not looking forward to taking my truck in. Thanks in advance on any replies.

 

sounds like you broke the ring and pinion...believe or not, it's more common with our tacomas and fj cruisers then you would imagine..
this rear set is out of my buddies FJ...




my other wheeling buddy HBMurphy here on TW has recently broken his on the All Pro challenge we were getting ready to do..broke on the very first obstacle lol...ask him why is new nickname is "Mater" hahahahaha

 

How many miles did those guys go before failure? I am really dreading dealing with the dealership in the morning. I am just wondering what type of flak they will put me through on this, since rear diffs are usually an item that has to get torn up to fail.

 

HBMurphy's truck is an 09 so his is new, my buddy's FJ is an 07 i believe. i forgot what year so maybe you'll need to do some research but there was a bad batch and quite a few have broke. if you are still under warranty then there should be no problem, but of course that depends on your actuall dealership. and they give you any hassle you can always esculate your warrenty claim and go through Toyota themselves. i know Sara from All Pro Off Road nuked two rears and had to esculate her claim to get it fixed. but that was a few years ago when the problem was first being noticed.

 

My 05 went out at around 90K.

I did a search and found it to be pretty common. Luckily, I found one from a 2008 on ebay for $550. They are hard to find!

 

i found one on race-dezert.com a few weeks ago i posted it up in the buy sell trade

 

Great.... something else to break. I'm slowly starting to wish I hadn't bought this truck. Wheel seals went bad twice, now I've got the front diff bearing problem... and people are blowing rear ends now? Screw that, starting to think I should get an F-150 while my truck is still worth something.

 

Sara from All Pro blew the LSD rear..twice, which is a little bigger then the e-locker equipped 3rd

 

So far most of my research was 05-06 with isolated instances on newer ones. As far as getting another truck, well as far as I see it, they all (all brands) have problems. Any more I am leaning on going with whatever brand that has a dealership in my area that takes care of people. The unfortunate side of that for me, my nearest Toyota dealer does not have a great track record for customer service.

 

the first one broke in the driveway of her house hahaha...

 

nah, not form Sara lol..she wheels her junk harder then i ever will

 

Just an update-blown ring and pinion. Getting replaced under warranty.

Looking on a FJ site earlier and looks like loads have blown on those guys. http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/foru...35767-broken-rear-diff-build-date-please.html is the site I was browsing on. I assume that the FJ and Tacoma use the same 8" rear? Is there anyone out there that has upgraded their rear axle to something else?

Right now I am pretty disappointed in what I have read on the rear axles and will be reluctant to use the locker once I get over the 60k mark. Just my 2 cents

 

Or you can call it a blessing and get yourself some some shorter (more torque) gears!

Just used my "Opportunity" to re-gear and lock up the front!

Regarding the 60k mark not using a locker - just get hooked up like Tom (MonkeyProof), myself and many others by getting gears from East Coast Gear and have a 5 year warranty...

 

I don't think the problem is the locker...it's the gears.

Wasn't there a re-call on 05 tacos with the locking diff because of failed ring gears? Seems I remember Toyota got a "bad batch" of gears for those early trucks. Probably the same thing happening with the FJ's. The Taco's and FJ's use the same axle, just a different gear...3.73 for taco's and 3.90 for FJ's. Toyota probably got another "bad batch" of 3.90 gears for those FJ's.

 

yea they had some sort of bad batch or something... from what i've heard though once you have it replaced the new ones should be trouble free....

not sure what sara was doing to blow her's but it seems mostly more like a problem with the elocker guys not the 8.4 rears...

 

I've got an '06, and often times I've gotta run the truck forward and backward a few feet each time to get it to engage, and disengage. Is this the sign of a pending problem, or a normal means of engaging the locker?

 

Nope, that is normal with the e-locker.