smitty2418

Okay guys, I'm new to this forum but have just hit a brick wall with my car. Its a 99 Z28 A4. Has 4.11's and the tranny is all stock other than it being tuned with my ECU and a deep Derale pan. I JUST installed the deep pan and put a new filter in yesterday along with my pinion seal. My gears have whined since i bought the car but ever since i changed the seal and put the deep pan on yesterday it whines and grinds SO much more now. It slightly whines under acceleration but no matter what speed I am at it seems to be coming from the transmission now, especially under 40mph with no throttle, just coasting to a stop. I took the driveshaft out today and put it in drive and didnt hear anything, put the DS back in and it started again. I had the car on jackstands and with the car idling in drive the speedo read about 30mph, and the whine would come and go. Any ideas?

smitty2418

Anyone?

mrvedit

Whining is usually from the rear end.
Exactly what did you do to replace the "pinion seal"?

monte383sbc

iTrader: (15)

seems like your ring and pinion making some noise, doubt its in the trans, if it was your trans it would most likely be grinding all the time from a sun shell failure, but pull your rear cover and check your fluid condition, check the backlash on your ring gear and put white or yellow grease to check where your teath wear pattern, if all this is fine then you probly have a bearing issue in the rear, but iam leaning towards a ring and pinon noise...

also you might have crushed the crush collar to much for your pinion gear when you replaced the seal

smitty2418

Well I that makes me feel a little better. I would rather it be the rear end than the tranny. I bought the car with 30,000 miles last year and it has 52,000 now. It came with the 4.11's when I bought it and it has whined the whole time. I finally got a new 3 inch DS to get the vibration gone and less rotational mass. I replaced the filter and added the deep pan so I didn't know if it was the filter not getting fluid to the tranny. When I changed the pinion seal, I counted how many teeth the pinion had with the nut on it then I removed. Once I removed it I could move the pinion around quite abit 360*. I didn't think anything of it so I replaced the seal and put 2qts or royal purple 75w-90 in it. It has a Proform cover on it. Then I took it down the road and it whined the same as it did under acceleration but when I let off and there was no load on it, it whined 10 times worse.

smitty2418

I was reading all day and watching videos of that sun bearing/shell today and I don't think it would go bad just from a filter change and deep pan install. Especially since I haven't had ONE prob with my tranny and it shifts perfectly fine and doesn't slip at all. Same as it was just have that damn whining and grinding noise and it makes me uneasy

mrvedit

Don't want to be insulting, but I assume you know that a deep pan requires a "deep" filter.

Based on monte383sbc's advice it sounds like your pinion and ring gear had bad contact causing the whine and replacing the seal made it a bit worse.

smitty2418

I know it requires a deep filter but the pan I have is a Derale pan with the cooling tubes and it uses the standard depth filter. I'm thinking that too, I think I may have just added insult to injury with the rear end yesterday :/ no bueno

mjs1012

iTrader: (36)

I'm willing to bet when you put the pinion nut back on you didn't set it to where it was and possibly over torqued it, which is easy to do, so the gears are off thus making the noise.

smitty2418

Yeah I pulled the dif cover off and the pinion gear moves in all directions. Bearing is shot. Well I bought a Richmond rebuild kit with everything but I'm having problems getting the driver side axle out. I got the c clip off the passenger side but the driver side will not go in far enough to let the the c clip loose and fall. Any suggestions?