Found this in my Diff

I started hearing a slight whining sound from the back of the truck around 15.5k. Here I am at 16.6k at the dealership. The pic below shows what the tech found. The service manager said they will be ordering a diff and they haven't even pulled the cover yet. What else do I need make sure happens?

Edit: What could this be from? This is obviously not shavings.

 

It sounds like you are be taken care of appropriately.

 

New Diff should take care of it.

 

^^^This^^^

Sounds like they're addressing the issue quicker than most. Just let them give you a new diff and go from there.

 

Thanks for the replies. I know these differentials have been known to be problem children, and this is my first time ever dealing with warranty work so I just wanted to make sure I was covered.

 

I've never heard of the differential issues. Where did you find this out? Tranny/Gearing issues yes, diff issues is new to me.

 

Probably talking about the weeping / howling, though they're not this.


We can't forget about the grenaded ones in the snow this year.

 

Only if you let the wife drive

 

That was epic.

 

I was thinking of the howling, this was a different noise though.

Grenaded?? missed that one.

 

Oh, there were a couple (a front and a rear) plus one pretzeled drive shaft. Just wintertime fun and a lot of throttle.

 

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/rear-differential-major-damage.596261/

 

Oh my.

 

That frag just makes me laugh, esp knowing how I abused cars when I was younger.

 

Make sure the axles are true with the correct backlash

 

Someone didn’t clean out the case when it was manufactured. If you look closely you can see that they were formed by the end of a drill bit pushing through the metal. Very sloppy workmanship.

 

You have no clue man. Let me know when you build 25K diffs a month and set up all the processes to accomplish this...
Then you can opine with authority lol.

 

They aren’t know to be problem children at all. Some had bad seals and the whine is characteristic of all gears. The diffs are both strong and reliable. Any problems are anomalies.

 

Chips will be chips. Toyota is essentially the inventor of the modern approach to quality (spurred in part by the aftermath of ww2 but that's another story), so I have no doubt there a plenty of quality checks and balances that are engineered into the production of these things. That being said, there's a reason why defects per million is still a metric, things slip through the cracks, get missed, etc. The good thing is that their response is exactly what I would expect from an honest and reputable service manager.