I had my rear end rebuilt (not by choice) and they had to use Richmond gears since the GM ones were not available. They did warn me about the noise, but I am hating it!

The guy said that synthetic fluid may help, but he did not know for sure.

So, now that my 500 mile break in period is over, I changed the gear oil (took the cover off) to Mobil 1 75/90 and added the GM LSA into the rear end as well. The rear end sounds the same...drives me nuts!

Is there ANYTHING I can do to help? Any ideas of what may work (outside of a new set of gears or a 12-bolt that is)? Has anyone had this issue and figured out something that worked?

I would appreciate any and all input, who better to ask then fellow F-body owners?
Thanks!

 

This is an inherant problem with these cars, but if you want, get some dyanmat and throw that on the back hatch area, and it should take care of a lot of it.

 

Hmmm, never thought of that! Not a bad idea!


Sheesh, we should not have to deal with this anyway, damn this kinda thing makes me mad......I would have opted for the 12-bolt had I had the $$$$ at the time.....

Anything else that someone has tried?

 

well, I can't give you a total cure all.. but for #1 I'd take it back and have them go through it and make sure all the specs are still what's they're supossed to be and makesure the pattern is wearing in good.

I had a nasty noise and vibration in mine for about the first 700 miles.. I check everything over and over again, even replacing the DS... it ended up the pinion bearing preload had loosened up or wasn't tight enough to begin with.. I tightened it up, and now I have almost NO whine at all, just a slight amount when I back-load the gears.

but once you ahve gear whine, if you can't figure out what's causing it... it's never get better, only worse, and once you have about 1500mi on a set.. they're pretty much worn in and it'll be ther forever then.

Here's a website that helped me figure out what mine was/could've been. http://www.dippy.org/svcman/sm03.html

 

You might want to get hold of Drive Train Specialist (DTS) in Michigan or Ring and Pinion, in Washington State.

My guess is that you are stuck with the noise unless you swap out the gears.

At least you might get a good price on some new ones. And if you have other than 3.73s on an A-4 or 4.10s on M-6, I'd also suggest going with those rations.

And get GM OEMs if possible, even over Motive.

I understand they are the quietest.JMHO

And...have them install with RATECH solid shim spacers in lieu of the crush sleeves.