Cascade Crew

[Xophertony]

So my new rearend is making noise. The best i can describe it is that it sounds like the worlds smallest bagpipe quartet is warming up near the rear of my transmission tunnel. The noise is speed dependent, not RPM dependent. The noise does not care if I am in gear, or under power. So it seems to have more to do with the rotation of the tires than the speed of the engine. I put the car on stands and got up to about 65MPH in gear (Scary as HECK) and the noise did not come, so it requires some type of load.

I have decided that to the best of my knowledge this must be rear end noise. So i have decided rather than going in and out a bunch, and in the interest of speed (only three weekends left until cows!) I would do the pinion bearings and the axle bearings at the same time. I found a great write-up on the axle bearings, and am confident in my abilities to do it. http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/transmissions-drivetrain/493071-tips-tricks-installing-axles.html I however DO NOT know what needs to be done to change a pinion bearing. Anyone whant to school me on some tech? Or offer some advice as to why I am wrong, and how the noise I described could not be the rear end?

Thanks Crew!

[90droptoproc]

have you checked to make sure you didnt run over the worlds smallest bagpipe quartet??

always a possibility

other then that, I have no advice to offer

[flea]

Aside from the above advice, all I can add is that one of the best ways I have found to avoid unwanted rear end noise is to avoid bad beer and beans.

On the off chance that it is a car related problem, I will step back and let those more knowledgeable in the ways of noisy cars offer advice.

[Xophertony]

This place is a wealth of knowledge.

[jchaussee]

I can not offer any tech advice, but I was looking at a rear end that,needed pjnion bearings changed and afyer lots of researxh it seemed to be quite too involved for myself. Shimming and the such, so I passed.

[Dewey316]

The pinion bearing has a couple of gotcha's involved. The first and obvious one is the correct preload on the pinion after crushing the crush sleeve. IF you get a solid pinion spacers, no worries, but if you use a crush sleeve, you need to get this right.

The second one is the pinion depth. As Brandon has shown me more than once now, you are usually right there when you re-use the shim pack from the housing you are working on. BUT, you have to check. There are tools to do this to check the pinion depth. The other way to try to gauge the pinion depth is to look at how the wear pattern sits, as the pinion is raised or lowered via shims where the wear pattern hits the ring teeth changes.

Its not **that** bad of a job to rebuild on a 10both if you have access to a press. But, you really want to do it with someone who has done a few so that you can get the wear pattern right, and the pinion crush sleeve right.

[chevymad]

Riding in your car Tony I heard nothing that I would consider being pinion bearing noise. I'd leave those alone.

Your noise is more of a seal or metal guard scraping noise. Perhaps the shield behind the yoke is bent?

If its not getting louder, you may even have to apply the let her develope principle.

[Twilightoptics]

Dust shield from the brakes?

[chevymad]

[Xophertony]

I am going to swap out those brakes soon anyway. They were assembled by Quasitraction, so who knows how screwed up they are. I pulled a drum and saw nothing awry before we put the rear end in.

After cows I am going to swap out the drums for discs, at that time I will aslo do axel bearings and seals (you have to pull the axles when swapping from drum-disc anyway, might as well)

If the noise goes away, I will let that be the end of it. Thanks for the advise guys.

[Quasi-Traction]

[Twilightoptics]

Wow, that rear end gets around!

Business in the front, party in the back?