Started to hear a noise from the rear end a while back, it's only there from 20 - 30 mph, accelerating, decelerateing, coasting, it didnt mater. only heard it for the first 10 minutes or so on the road on cold mornings. also hearing a high pitched vibration from the shifter which can be stopped by holding the shift lever tight in my hand and its only there at highway speeds... weird!

slid under the rear end and found the axle fluid level about 1 inch below the fill hole. and a bunch of thick metalic goo stuck to the magnetic plug (bearing material, or material from the limited slip clutches I'm guessing).

hopefully things will be o.k. with the fluid being changed at the dealership. I hate for the retarded monkeys that work in the service department to have to go much further than that! changing a ring and pinion is tricky work and NO WAY will they do it right!

AND, the automatic door locks only unlock the 2 front doors when you stop, getting tired of that!

Pretty disapointed for a $42,000 truck with 4,000 miles on it! Still better than the 2001 Chevy I had that spent most of the 2 years I had it in the shop for any one of a dozen things.

Hopefully the dealer chimps can help out with this stuff, not expecting much.

 

Hey Mr 555 if the "dealer chimps" and "retarded monkeys" can't fix it why don't you put on a pair of coveralls and fix it? Seems like you know how to do everything eh?? And if you paid 42 g for a truck with 4000 miles on it you got taken. Maybe the dealership "monkeys" know something you don't. With an attitude like that if you walked into my service dept I would kick you out the door in a heartbeat. Hmm the Chev was always in the shop also eh?? Do I see a pattern???
Really nice post for your 3rd.
Oh yeah nice sig too.

 

The sticker was $42,000, and who in there right mind would spend $500 for a new ring an pinion set (with install kit) when this thing is under warranty. I'll give the monkeys there shot for $500, and the dealers themselves were telling me there mechanics should be flippin burgers for a living.
And your absolutely right, this would be a pattern here, and that was my point, the quality of the products being produced by the big 3 is of NO concern anymore, Its all about the $. (why they ARENT the big 3 anymore!)
So be honest now, how many times have you told people things like "its supposed to make that noise", or "thats normal for break in", or an old favorite of everyone "they all do that!"
ANYBODY who's been to a dealer has heard this stuff, and you expect ANY respect?!? here's a new one for ya. "want fries with that?"

 

No way your truck would have ever been serviced in my dealership. The owner himself would have thrown you out with an attitude like that. Oh and BTW the pattern I was referring to was you being an unreasonable whining owner. But that's okay your second post proved that without my help. Enjoy your new Toyota you will be purchasing.

 

I'd rather be driving a Toy than owning two Furds!

Bret

 

I'd also rather have more Dodges in the house but my wife hates the NV5600 trans. The ZF is much easier to shift (I agree) so that is why she got the Ford truck. It was either a DC with a auto (never ever gonna happen unless I lose my legs) or the F250. And it was an unbelievable deal. The F150 was dirt cheap also and good enuff for a service truck. Wind noise what wind noise??? FWIW if Toyota had a full size truck with a diesel (at a reasonable price) I would have one in a minute. Even better if Honda built one. Long live the SUV!!!

 

There were a couple settings I didn't like about the factory alarm but fortunately the owner's manual has some directions about how to change them.

First of all, I didn't like the horn chirping when I set the alarm. Owner's manual has instructions how to disable that feature.

Secondly, I didn't like having to push the "unlock" button on the remote twice in order to unlock all 4 doors.

BDude, I think changing the option to have the "unlock" button on the remote unlock all 4 doors ALSO sets the alarm to unlock all 4 doors when you go to exit the vehicle.

If your differential needs replacing and it's under warranty, I'm guessing the dealer will probably replace the entire axle. You might even try insisting they do it that way so you get gears that are set from the factory.

 

My .02 I took my truck in for rear end noise and they said it was a bad ring and pinion set, and that they would have to order a new rear end for 2 grand, I said do what ever it takes.. its your money, the funny thing is they needed it for a whole day to make this assumption, they said I could drive it till the rear end came in, so I went to the lot to pick it up but before I got in I got on my back and looked under to see if they really pulled the plate off, ( THEY SAID THEY DID ), but no grease, fingerprints, it even had the same sharpie line I marked across one of the bolts, so no big deal since they are gonna replace it anyway, but when I got my statement It showed where they pulled the cover and inspected it and charged Dodge $180 to do this, seems a little fishey, I wonder if Dodge knows about this practice, I could do all these repairs myself so Im not quite the dummy they take me for, a detroit locker kit costs much less and I can do it in about two hours, I understand that these mechanics arent farm raised in Iowa somewhere groomed to do this kind of work, and mistakes will be made, but lets not be dishonest here.

 

From what I've seen here from guys having warranty work done on diffs, it varies by dealer. It seems most repairs have been done to the existing hardware by the dealers, with varying amounts of success. Primary reason for not swapping out were blamed on a backorder of diffs at the assembly plant. I think the real reason is too much cost and DC wouldn't support that work.

Its interesting to see where peoples thresholds are when it comes to gear whine. To me, there shouldn't be any; at any time - especially on a new vehicle. To dealers, it seems that all of sudden they go deaf, or say "they all do that". Yeah, all of them except their cars......

I know Spots got riled up a little, but in my experience, it takes someone with some experience to set up a rear diff properly (read: "silent"). The local Ford dealer wouldn't change out gears for me in my Mustang. I ended up going to a well known shop in the Northern VA area that wasn't known for being "hacks". I took the owner for a spin in it before the work started by telling him that I wanted him to hear something. He said "I don't hear a darn thing" (words to that effect). I said thats right, and when I leave today, I still won't hear anything, right? He got the point.

Guess what, it had a little whine in it. Did a U turn and parked in the doorway of the shop. Owner said, "whats up" I tossed him the keys and told him to take it for a spin. They re-did it right the second time.

To me, gear whine is unacceptable.

 

bulabula I agree with what you posted. Some configurations of vehicles (cargo vans) echo the rear end or the planetary whine in the tranny. Some pickup trucks are worse than others. I think the thread starter should get his truck fixed, I was pointing out with his dismal attitude that it probably wasn't going to happen. If he is a supervisor (I doubt it) I would suspect he is living in the cross hairs of someone's rifle.
Flat rate pays garbage to set up rear ends (2.8 hours or something of the like on Fords anyway) and always took me at least half a day to do properly. Did I get everyone bang on the first time? Nope. Did I fix them so they were quiet? Yep. In the early 90's the Crown Vics had bad howls in the rear ends. Some customers didn't even hear them (older gents usually drove them and some are deaf). I would work on the brakes or whatever and take it down the road. Loud as can be but the customer can't hear it. I don't like diff howl myself. I hate wind noise even more. The reason I could never drive a convertable Mustang.

 

I got tired of having to unlock the doors twice myself when passengers needed to get into the truck... and having to unlock them again when I stop because all 4 doors don't unlock at the same time.
The owners manual tells how to program the Keyless Entry to unlock all doors at once, and to kill the horn chirp. See Keyless Entry in the index.
Nat

 

I just switched my engine over to rotella synthetic today after 22,000 miles. Checked trans oil in 6 speed and it was fine. Checked rear end and it was exactly like yours one inch low and lots of metal goo. I do not have the limited slip by the way. I have a whine that has just come on the last 2-3 thousand miles. Just notice it in 5th at about 35mph. My turbo also has a moan to it lately. I think the cold weather has made them both noticable lately. The turbo is no big deal, but the rear end I don't know what to do. Just doesn't seem right to me.

 

FINALLY!!!! Got a chance to take the truck in for service, MY APOLOGIES TO SPOTS AND ANY OTHER DODGE SERVICE REPS.!!! My coments of incompitence were based entirely on my 2 year experience with 5 different chevy dealerships. anyway, the dealer went through the axle housing with a white glove! and found absolutely no more of the metalic sludge that was stuck to the magnet (I found about 2 tsp's worth of this stuff stuck to the plug). inspected the gears, bearings, diff. and found absolutely no sign of wear at all (I was right there with him looking), but once full, NO MORE NOISE!!! as for the door locks they tried everything possible and found the insturment pnl. will have to be replaced (I had already unsuccesfully tried everything in the owners manual a long time ago with no luck). and as luck usually has it the shifter wouldnt make that weird noise for nothing when we took it out for a test drive, but they spent an hour going over everything they could short of pulling the tranny to try and find what might have caused it. ANYONE CONSIDERING BUYING A TRUCK HAS GOT TO GET A DODGE, I STILL CAINT BELIEVE WITH THE SERVICE AND RESPECT THESE GUYS GIVE PEOPLE. My apologies again!!! and thinking back on that chevy just REALLY makes me sick now! anyone who owned a '99-'01 vortec engine will know what I'm talking about!