1999 Land Cruiser - no serious off-roading in its life but has 237k miles.
About 2 months ago I was driving at 75 mph or so on the highway and a loud noise seemed to come from the front left (driver side) and the tachometer shot up to ~ 4k rpm with no vehicle speed increase. I let off the throttle quickly and the rpm dropped (but my heart rate didn't) then reapplied the throttle easily and everything seemed normal since then. Today, the same thing happened several times while driving 30 to 50 mph. It sounds like a mechanical whirring sound that really gets your attention. Immediately after I let off the throttle and eased back into it today, I tried accelerating relatively hard and it didn't slip or whatever it is doing when it makes that noise. But then if a few minutes it would rev up under light load. I thought that since in a normal rear wheel drive car power is sent to the wheel with the least resistance and since the sound seemed to be coming from the front that if I engaged the center diff lock that the engine wouldn't rev up since half of the power would go to the rear wheels. I don't know if my logic is sound but it didn't do it again and I was able to get home. (I didn't want to engage the center diff lock since I was on clean drive pavement but I didn't want the engine revving up either and didn't want to limp home at 5 mph and back up traffic for miles so I tried it).
I haven't checked diff fluids or anything yet.
Our joke in the car was that it was an expensive sound
:-( I'm scared.
Any ideas?
Thank you.
About 2 months ago I was driving at 75 mph or so on the highway and a loud noise seemed to come from the front left (driver side) and the tachometer shot up to ~ 4k rpm with no vehicle speed increase. I let off the throttle quickly and the rpm dropped (but my heart rate didn't) then reapplied the throttle easily and everything seemed normal since then. Today, the same thing happened several times while driving 30 to 50 mph. It sounds like a mechanical whirring sound that really gets your attention. Immediately after I let off the throttle and eased back into it today, I tried accelerating relatively hard and it didn't slip or whatever it is doing when it makes that noise. But then if a few minutes it would rev up under light load. I thought that since in a normal rear wheel drive car power is sent to the wheel with the least resistance and since the sound seemed to be coming from the front that if I engaged the center diff lock that the engine wouldn't rev up since half of the power would go to the rear wheels. I don't know if my logic is sound but it didn't do it again and I was able to get home. (I didn't want to engage the center diff lock since I was on clean drive pavement but I didn't want the engine revving up either and didn't want to limp home at 5 mph and back up traffic for miles so I tried it).
I haven't checked diff fluids or anything yet.
Our joke in the car was that it was an expensive sound
:-( I'm scared.Any ideas?
Thank you.