Just been told the bearing in the centre diff may be on its way out, its just started making a whining noise, if I leave it what else will it be buggering up in the mean time.


Mark.

 

Who told you it was the bearing in the centre diff? It's difficult to diagnose the exact location of any failing bearing or other suspect noise in the gearbox without stripping it down, and as things stand the centre diff doesn't have anything in it likely to cause a constant whine. Far more likely to be damage in the main gear cluster or a worn input or output shaft bearing.

Seeing as we don't know where the cause of the problem is, it is impossible to tell you what other damage leaving it be could cause. It would also help if we knew why type and model year of gearbox you were talking about. UK car with viscous centre, Type R/RA DCCD box, what?

Eh? What's the number of people viewing got to do with the price of fish? If you knew it was a gearbox question, wtf didn't you post it here in the first place? At end of day it doesn't matter if there are 500 people reading General and 1 reading here. The people who are most likely to know the answer to your question are likely to be reading the technical forums, so that's the place to post...

 

Correct.

 

I'm sure I had the tappered roller bearings replaced in my UK centre diff after it developed a whine (noticable above 40mph).
The smallest of the bearings was completly shot with over 180 degrees of the case hardening on the inner race worn away (I have it as a souvenir).

 

In reply to your questions greasemonkey,

I trust the opinion of the the person who diagnosed the likely problem , it may be that they have already worked on cars that had similar failings and therefore have a good idea as to what is wrong. I agree that to be totally sure a strip down will probably be needed.


Maybe there is, maybe not, I don't know thats why I went to someone who does and got the answer i did, but if it was a main gear cluster or a worn input or output shaft bearing wouldn't there be other problems say with changing gears ?


Point taken.


Manual transmission, JDM MY99, Viscous, Legacy B4 RS, 2.0 litre non-turbo.


I normally post to the correct forum but in this instance decided to send it to general instead, I knew it would probably get moved by the mods but just wanted it to be seen by a few more people before it did, I won't do it again


Mark.

 

Well whatever it is the noise sounds like its getting worse on a daily basis.


Mark.

 

So have I, and unfortunately while it's sometimes possible to guess the cause given the exact nature of the noise (the frequency of any tapping, whether it gets better or worse on an open or trailing throttle etc.), I would never put any money on an educated guess at the cause without stripping it down.

Fraid so.

No. You'd only get selection/retention problems if there were fault(s) in the selection mechanism, detents, check ***** or synchros. Damage to the gear teeth themselves wouldn't cause any issues beyond excessive whine/knocking/etc., until a tooth actually breaks.

 

Thanks for the reply greasemonkey, appreciated

Looks like stripping down is the only true option

This is gonna go down well with the misses, due to go to cornwall in 2 weeks but I'm sure if I give her the option of sitting on the hard shoulder of the M5 at 3 in the morning I might just keep the danglies


Mark.

 

i'm sure if i remember right there are bearings at either end of the diff and one end did change from either taper to ball or vice versa

 

Well my knackered one was a Taper as it's right here next to me.
It's about the size of an Escort rear wheel bearing. The other end was also Tappered but was about twice the size.

 

I've managed to get someone else to listen to the car and they've come to same conclusion that its possibly a problem with the Centre Diff, I know whats been said about a stripping it down to find the true cause but due to the time scale involved this is now not possible, so its back to my original question If it is the centre diff thats failing whats the likely outcome of having to drive maybe 800 plus miles.


Mark.