Diff howl

Don't blame you one bit. My truck has 10k on it and makes no sound at all, but if my truck sounded like yours, I would have done something similar to what you did.

 

In the same boat here. Mine makes the exact same howl as the video. Dealer replaced the rear end and it howls just the same. Piece of shit.

 

You don't have to replace it. It's not actually broken. $500 to a machine shop to re-shim it sounds a lot better to me that $3k in losses selling and still having to buy something else - and pay taxes on that again. But, to each his own. I don't worry about it too much - if it breaks, it breaks. I save a lot of money by not having any f**ks to give

 

My whole point is there are much more important things in life than a diff noise. What is the price of happiness? $3K? $10K?

Also the information you are "getting out" is all opinion and conjecture, not fact. You have a diff noise. Toyota won't do anything for you because, while it's a noise, it is not detrimental to proper operation and safety. The lawyers won't touch your case because they would lose. Your truck depreciated when you drove it off the lot. Those are your facts. Everything else (the who, what, where, when, why) is just a guess. Again, good luck and I'm sure you will find a way out of this and into a better (for you) vehicle. Also, the 4Runner is a good vehicle, but by no means perfect. I actually got rid of my 2nd 5th gen because of all the rattles, squeaks and nit picky crap that plagued it. Traded for another one and it was fine.

 

Why hasn't anyone who has this issue taken it to a rear end shop?

Has anyone who regeared have this noise before or after?

 

I think their opinion is "I shouldn't have to fix it myself, it's Toyota's problem." Personally I think it's a gray area because, while it's an annoying noise, it probably is not detrimental to the reliability or durability of the truck. Truthfully, judging from that recording above, I don't know if resetting gear set properly is the real problem. Could be many things, like work hardening, harmonics, shim compression, qc or any myriad of things. From what I've read, some 2nd gens have this issue as well. I do know it only effects a small percentage of owners so apparently it is not a widespread problem. If it happens to me I would just dynamat the rear cab wall and floor and maybe turn up the stereo a bit.

 

When I drove out to Vegas on my way to Utah, I noticed the differential whining getting louder. As I was climbing small hills on my way out past Nellis AFB, I noticed I was struggling maintain speed above 60 MPH. This wasn't just on inclines but flat ground. I would have to constantly adjust the throttle cruise control, then the RPM's would shoot past 3k to maintain a normal cruising speed. I actually thought about dropping it off at a dealership in Vegas before continuing to Utah.

Before my 500 mile mark, the truck made virtually no noise and didn't have this issue and seemed to cruise better. But hey its just a " noise".

 

I have this noise too! First and second diff, luck me.

Misery loves company.

After having two bad diffs I don't think its totally the rear differential. Particularly since people have "fixed" or masked the issue with a lift/bigger tires.

Or new gear sets.

Anyway I have US Toyota Executive Office on the hook for promising a fix which will probably be something to mask it.

 

Sorry, are you saying that your noisy diff was slowing your truck down, causing operating issues?

 

yes, both.

 

If I could have been 100% confident it was purely internal to the 3rd member, yeah that would have been a viable option. But when Toyota comes back to me and says diff one was inspected and is in spec and shows no abnormal signs of wear and then diff 2 from a completely different production run/timeframe exhibits the same issue, I lose faith in Toyota overall. You pay the big ticket price of Toyota so you dont have to be sitting at the dealer all the time. They went from "wow that's a serious issue and you shouldn't have to listen to your diff howl at volume 20+ on the radio" to "well, the 2nd differential does it too, must be normal, let us know if it fails or gets worse quickly but we are confident it isn't a safety concern." And yes, that is seriously what they told me before closing the case and telling me they wouldn't be taking any further actions. Tell me you acknowledge its an issue and you are working on a fix, don't take a sudden 180 and tell me you performed a $3k warranty job for a "normal characteristic."

At the end of the day, it wasn't the only issue I had with the truck, there were a few other issues, some inherent to the design of the vehicle that sealed my decision to get rid of it. If I need to spend a bunch of time and extra money fixing a vehicle, I don't need to spend $32k to have a vehicle to do it on.

That was my take on it, I understand everyone has different levels of what they will put up with.

 

I have heard this driving around 50-60 mph but I can honestly say that I had no control over it, did not respond to throttle input and had more to do with the direction my vehicle was traveling in relation to cross wind speeds. Its completely intermittent and absolutely unduplicateable unless the conditions are near perfect. I have encountered it on maybe 10% of all my driving.

Based on what I have heard and seen this is nothing but wind noise. Same effect the lower control arms have with the holes.

100% wind noise in my book. If it was truly a rear dif issue it would happen all the time and multiple speeds.