Whining noise

I drove to the leavenworth area this week and it is all high speed driving. When I was driving I shut off my radio to make sure everything was sound and I noticed a whining noise (fairly high pitch) coming from the back of the car. I can only figure it was the differential or maybe something along the driveshaft. When I would slow down, the noise would drop in pitch and then become unnoticable. What gives?

 

Whiner

Hey Mike. Check front seal for leakage and pinion for looseness. It's possible to have had a pinion nut/ crush sleeve/ or bearing failure, causing an incorrect meshing of your ring and pinion gears. If so its time for a rebuild...Tim

 

This is kinda off beat, but were you driving on new concrete???
Sometimes, new or nearly new concrete has small grooves perpendicular to direction of travel, which will create a variable pitched whining sound, depending on your speed.

 

Damn Concrete

I hate that concrete noise..Nothing more annoying, but I can see where you could get that confused..Like a ringin in the ears..

Bill

 

I was driving on highway 2 and it wasn't recently paved where I could remember, but I did notice the sound kinda come and go.

 

You could have too much gear play (distance between ring and pinion gear). When there is too much room, the gears will actually hit each other, making a whining noise, instead of a knocking noise.

 

Let's say for instance, that this wasn't just road noise that I had never noticed before, will the sound get worse until one day when I try to drive away the car won't move? I don't really like to fix it unless it is really needing repair, but will I damage anything else if I keep driving this way? I don't really drive the car to hard.

 

It shouldn't, the noise will drive you crazy until you fix it though :laugh:

 

carrier bearings, perhaps ?

 

From what I have been told by people experinceing the same problem it "sounds" (no pun intended) :laugh: that it is most likely your axle bearings.
This posibility is even greater if the car has high mileage or has been driven kinda hard. Namely putting heavy loads on the rear end.
If this is so the sound should get louder as you drive it more.
I would have it checked if it gets worse.
Good luck

Thad

 

Im far from an expert on this stuff, but I had an experience w/ a high pitched whine in my tranny when I got up to about 55/65 MPH, it got worse untill the bands started slipping at a little over 103k miles! If it sounds like its coming from the rear then it's most likely not the tranny but at the time I didn't exactly know where the sound was coming from untill my bands started slipping! Yikes!!! ou:

 

Could you elaborate on the bands slipping part? What kind of symptoms did the car give you other than noise?

That may have happened to me a few days ago. I felt kind of a hesitation, and a small "clunk" noise and then all was calm. I think the car was shifting into second when it happened.

I hope it's not the transmission. The car has 148 thousand on it so it might be time, but it still shifts smooth on the freeway, even on hills. When I move it out of park and into drive or reverse, sometimes there is some slack in the transition from park to gear which results in a clunk noise and a small buck from the car.