Chirping or Cricket noise drivetrain

Edit, updated 1 June: In summary, the ford ranger spicer bearing worked out well after trial and error with spacers. Bit of a pain to dial that in by adjusting height and taking test drives each time. Swapping out the u-joints also got rid of a rumble I was experiencing.

The “chirp” I described below was basically my front brake pads making racket. Installed new pads and haven’t heard the noise anymore. A metal on metal I was hearing at the same time was the OEM center support bearing worn out, which is why I was initially dumbfounded on why the chirp came back after swapping the bearing. But now I have it figured out.

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Original post 9 May: The last few days my truck has begun making what I can best describe as a chirping/cricket sound from somewhere along the drivetrain.

I have no camera I can affix to the frame and it only happens when slowing down after being at highway speed for a bit.

Essentially it’s a 1/2 mile to hwy ramp. No noise. Drive ~70 mph about 11 miles to work and when I get to my work exit I can hear the chirp. I sometimes hear it when hitting the gas but it is mostly when I let off the gas and coast.

Looking over the engine in the driveway, I cannot make out any definite noise from any of the engine pulleys. OEM belt seems tight

My current suspicion is carrier bearing has gone to shit, or a U-joint. There is bad vertical play, like 1” upward movement, in the carrier bearing, not much horizontal play. Rubber is shot for sure.

Plan is to rehab the rear driveshaft regardless.

Thanks!

 

Grease your U joints and report back....

 

I greased them no more than 1k miles ago and greased them again a few days ago when the noise started. Zero change in the noise.

 

any slop in the driveline? mine started making almost the same sound and one was bad. Can you tell if its coming from the front of the truck or back?

 

There seems to be slop. I notice some rumble on acceleration. My truck is 3-linked so different feel but I definitely suspect a rear driveshaft component is the culprit.

I’ll be replacing the 3 u-joints and CB anyway but really trying to check all the blocks in case that doesn’t end up identifying the issue.

 

Now that I’m thinking about it more it seems to go away to some effect when braking I’m wondering if it might be the brakes. I’ll check into that this weekend. Some people on other forums reported similar symptoms.

 

Mileage on vehicle?
Manual transmission or auto?

 

~62k miles and auto

 

Last night I went to gently tapping the caliper pins back and forth with a ballpeen, and rotated them by hand a little. Today during my commute the duration and volume of the noise was significantly reduced and on the way home it wasn’t until I hit the brakes at my exit and entered some traffic that I heard it for a short stent.

Tomorrow I’m going to polish the pins, add some caliper grease to things and also add in a second spring on each caliper. Then ill see if it goes away for good and update the OP if so, in case anyone happens upon this thread.

 

To update: front brakes are not the issue. Went ahead and replaced all idler pulleys and put on a new belt last night but sound is back this morning. In fact it is louder at low speed, with the cold weather front that moved in. At 30+ it fades or is of much lower volume.

So back to focusing on drive shaft and replacing u-joints as preventative maintenance and then taking care of suspect #1, the center support bearing.

 

Talking to myself at this point but maybe it will help someone.

Replaced just the center support bearing a couple weeks back with a spicer bearing for a late 90s ranger, basically same as the IEDLS poly setup people run, but rubber instead. Few members on here running the spicer with no issues. Fixed a lot of slop in the drivetrain but then I had a terrible rumble at 60+ and these bearings require some trial and error in correct spacer height for mounting upside down. Truck was undriveable initially and took a lot of trial and error with spacer lengths to get it dialed in. I ended up somewhere around 1.5” but this is all highly variable depending on individual truck and how it’s set up.

Was able to get rid of 85% of the rumble with the right spacer height and getting the driveshaft and pinion angles adjusted, but still had the same chirping noise occasionally after slowing down from highway speed. Finally had some

$31 spicer 513301x spicer 5-1330-1X u-joint kit

spicer 513301x u-joints on order from rock auto and installed yesterday. Now everything is smoothed out really nice. Just visually inspecting the original u-joints, they overall looked fine, but a couple seals were deteriorated.

Only thing remaining now is a slight faint whine at 60+ which I will need to investigate since it could be a number of things.