2006 Tacoma Off Road Differential Whine Video Help.

I just picked up a 2003 taco 2.4L 5speed RWD. I have the exact same issue. Same exact noise, comes on at about 40mph and gets louder the faster i go. I checked for play in the pinion and there was 0. Havent yet drained the gear oil though. Were you able to confirm the issue?

 

That’s a lot of metal especially considering it had been changed recently. That much metal on the first ever change could be considered normal as the gears break in and fabrication swerf gets collected.

For comparison my drain plug always has a dab of of ultra fine metal paste and that’s it. Basically polishing dust from the gears.

 

Isolated it to the pinion bearing by removing the rear driveline and running it in 4 wheel drive to make sure it was not wheel bearings. Just ordered a complete rear end from a junk yard with 80k on it. Cost me 1200 but at least i will get a few extra parts.

 

Picked up the complete rear end last night and swapped it over today. What a world of difference without that whine.

When I had them side by side you could very clearly hear the difference when moving it by hand.

Pulled apart the other rear end to see how everything looked. Ring and pinion looked good did not see any visible damage but you could feel the pinion bearing roughness.

axles were good and the bearings there felt good.

Is there a market for any of my left overs or should I send them to the scrap pile.

 

How long did it take you to swap it over. Ive been looking for rear ends online but it seems the first gen taco rear end is a little more tricky to find.

 

I would try to rebuild it on the cheap and sell it complete. Just an idea not sure what that would entail.

 

Everything went pretty smoothly. Honestly the e brake was the biggest pain because I did not want to disassemble and just unhooked a few springs to work around them.

getting it complete was nice because it was pretty much plug and play.

 

Hoping maybe someone else wants to rebuild or may need a core. I don’t know if it would be worth it to me to rebuild it.