MachRanger

I just had a set of Ford 4.10 gears, pinion and carrier bearings installed and now I'm getting an unusual grinding/rubbing noise coming from the rear when I make a slow right turn. It changes to a high pitched whine at above 70 in a right turn. I put in another bottle of friction modifier with no change. When I pulled the magnetic plug, it had a few pieces of sharp metal on it. Took the car back to the mechanic and he openned the diff up and we couldn't see anything wrong. We pulled the half shafts and the end bearings seemed fine. We both noticed that it seemed like there was quite a bit of end play or in-out slop in the half shaft. So we looked closely to see if the axle hub was rubbing anything and nothing. So at this point I'm wondering if my clutch packs are worn. If there was metal debris left in the assembly during the install, maybe it got caught up in the clutches and roasted them. If they are worn, will that allow the half shaft to move in and out more? I'm tempted to install a new set of clutch packs myself just to eliminate that as a posibility. When we looked into the carrier we couldn't really see the carrier bearings but there wasn't any slop in it so we 'assumed' they were okay. Anybody got any other ideas? Need help here.

ahddm

Can't help you but I'll give you a bump. Good luck

avengence

How many miles are on the car? I dont think the clutch packs are worn, and the mechanic should have seen that they were worn when he did the swap.

Did he put the axles in wrong when he put the car back together and now the splines are toast? I would have him check things like that because it sounds like when its put under load on one side and not the other something other than the clutch packs are bad.

Sounds kinda bad but if you did a burn out and checked your burn out marks you could see if both tires are spinning and the MIGHT give you some insight, but maybe not?

MachRanger

My car only has a little over 27k miles on it. I thought that is way too early for the clutch packs to be shot. And I really don't beat my car that hard either. Just mainly daily driving. The axles seemed fine when we pulled them out again. The sound really reminds me of a bad brake pad grinding against the disc but they're in great shape. And it makes the sound whether I'm applying brakes or not. Sounds like a metal on metal scrapping. When I get some time, I'm gonna pull the rear brakes apart and really give them a close inspection. Might rent a dial calipers and see how much back lash there is in the axles. I think there's too much. I'll keep the forum updated incase anybody else has the problem in the future.

avengence

Did you check the right side axle? Check the splines and make sure they arent damaged.

Also you need a dial indicator for checking backlash.

avengence

Also, I was going to ask. Does the car have any gear whine since you got the gears?

Rskapof

this happened to me, at first we thought it was the clutch packs that were slipped, and ford replaced them 3 times. Eventually we found that a control arm was bent, causing uneven tire wear, and making the clutch packs want to slip for some reason making that terrible grinding noise.

So_Cali

I've been hearing a grinding sound as well lately exactly as Mach was describing. More noticeable when stopping and going from a stop. Also I get a pretty odd creaking noise when I brake as well like theres a huge weight on'em...