I've been swamped with work and regeared my 5th gen 4Runner. I did the front clamshell that's still sitting on my bench ready to swap in when I have a half day free to do it. I built a spare clamshell so I could just swap them in an afternoon. Glad I did on a spare. It was a HUGE PITA to setup correctly. It's so time consuming to get the pinion depth correct for a good pattern. I don't know ZUK at gearinstalls.com - his photo writeups are very helpful for me to learn from. What they don't really capture is the amount of work involved in a clamshell to get gear patterns as good as his. For a DIY - even with all the specialty tools, it is not an easy or fun job. The guy is as much artist as mechanic IMO.
With Cruise Moab coming up I decided to have a local shop do my rear diff so I could get it fully broken in before the trip. I didn't want to re-gear and then go straight to Moab. I have no prior history with the local shop. I have a few people I trust to do diffs, but none are local and I couldn't take the down time to ship and such. I know there are some good local shops on MUD here in Utah who I'd rather support (and trust more), but most aren't near downtown SLC where I work. I was hoping for easy drop off early, UBER to work, pickup after work and save a day of my own shop time. So... everything seemed to go normally as far as the install, but now I'm hearing some gear noise. It's not loud, but it is audible and about the same volume as AT tire noise, just a different pitch. And it only is making some noise on very light acceleration. Just past coasting.
On heavier acceleration or deceleration - no noise. Unfortunately I didn't ask to take a picture of the gear pattern. Not sure why I didn't ask for that.
As far as parts - I re-used the carrier bearings, they're low mile OEM and put new pinion bearings on - mostly because those are hard to swap without potential damage. Gears are Circle K from Korea (sold by Revolution), and 4.56 ratio.
How concerned should I be? Am I overthinking this or should I be pulling the diff and checking the pattern / resetting up the gears myself? Should I give it a few hundred miles? Or should I try to fix now? Thoughts?
With Cruise Moab coming up I decided to have a local shop do my rear diff so I could get it fully broken in before the trip. I didn't want to re-gear and then go straight to Moab. I have no prior history with the local shop. I have a few people I trust to do diffs, but none are local and I couldn't take the down time to ship and such. I know there are some good local shops on MUD here in Utah who I'd rather support (and trust more), but most aren't near downtown SLC where I work. I was hoping for easy drop off early, UBER to work, pickup after work and save a day of my own shop time. So... everything seemed to go normally as far as the install, but now I'm hearing some gear noise. It's not loud, but it is audible and about the same volume as AT tire noise, just a different pitch. And it only is making some noise on very light acceleration. Just past coasting.
On heavier acceleration or deceleration - no noise. Unfortunately I didn't ask to take a picture of the gear pattern. Not sure why I didn't ask for that.
As far as parts - I re-used the carrier bearings, they're low mile OEM and put new pinion bearings on - mostly because those are hard to swap without potential damage. Gears are Circle K from Korea (sold by Revolution), and 4.56 ratio.
How concerned should I be? Am I overthinking this or should I be pulling the diff and checking the pattern / resetting up the gears myself? Should I give it a few hundred miles? Or should I try to fix now? Thoughts?
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