My new 4.10 gears suddently started whining...
 

I just had my motive performance 4.10 gears installed in my m6 two days ago. The guy i had do it put my friend's gears in his 94 GT and was highly recommended. In the past two days I have put about 260 easy going miles on her with the new gears. I parked it and the gears were really quiet and the next time I drive it.. about 30 min later... the gears are howling really loud! Should I change the fluid? it's really loud i bet people can easily hear it when i go by. I was going to change the fluid tomorrow or the next day. i'm going to call the guy soon and see what he thinks. is there anything else i could do? I have 71k miles on the car.

Best bet is to take it back to the guy that did the work without driving it much before you do. Somethings changed in your rear and he needs to figure out what.

yea... i'm going to call him today. it's like a 35 min drive to his place too...

yeah somethings not right. Gears shouldn't make noise, spite the brand. Every gear I've ever changed has been find (knock on wood) And I've used motive, yukon, richmond and GM's

installed correctly, there should be no noise...

Yes you should need to change the fluid! It should have been done after the first 100 mile critical break in period.

Not true..! It depends on the brand.. You don't need to change your fluid til about 500 mi..Some say 1,000.. 100 is way too early. They need a few heat cycles..Just ask Jeff from Jaw Gears..Pm him or something..

Irocem is giving you bad information. The gear oil needs to be changed after the first 100 miles due to the fact that there is a significant ammount of metal shavings in the gear oil. Would you drive a brand new engine 1000 miles without changing the oil? Same with new gears.

500mi break in is the normal, I did a 1k mile break in on my 9in. As to your problem, something did change. Were you beating on the car at all? because 4.10s in a 10 bolt are going to make noise, but from what your describing, this isnt normal for yous. I dont have any experience with motives but the 3 sets of richmonds all made a noticiable noise and they were perfectly fine, but they are known for it. Is your rear making any other noises, clunks...anything?

I had a set of Motive 4.10's installed about 1000 miles ago on my car. It was howling from the day I picked up the car & it's only getting worse. It's too the point where I had to stop at a store and stuff my ears with tissue paper. I wouldn't think the metal shavings could be a problem considering the magnet on the cover should pick out the shavings. But it's worth a change. I'm on the same boat with Gottahavels1.. I'm not sure what would be best??

How many people change the gear oil in the first 100 miles on brand new cars???? Answer: none. 500-1000 miles is perfectly fine on the first oil change. GM doesn't recommend the first gear oil change until 25k miles usually.

As far as the noise, if it suddenly got noisy chances are something changed in the setup. Most likely loss of pinion bearing preload, the pinion nut may have backed off or if you had new bearing installed then maybe he didn't put enough preload in them. If thats the case I would NOT drive it 40+ miles to get checked out, you could be ruining the gear set in that time. Its normal for gears to get noisy over time as they wear but over 1000's of miles or lots of hard hits. Some brands of gears are naturally noisy from day 1 even if the install is 100% perfect and sometimes a good brand of gear, if installed wrong, will be noisy.

Craig

I like how the grears make the car sound like a nasty supercharger.. Too bad there's nothing there :(
Also, my friend was talking on his cell phone in my car, the person on the phone was wondering why I kept blowing the horn, only to find out it was my gears! haha.. So I guess it sounds like a supercharger or a loud horn.. lol

exactly... change your oil after a few thousand miles if your really anal, theres a magnet for metal shavings and if you use a T/A cover buy a magnet. This whol heat cycle nonsence is a bit much, their heat treated gears man.

My gears did the same as the original poster. However, it was after a WOT run post break in period of 500 miles and 14 heat cycles. Like alamantia stated, it's difficult to believe that changing the oil or not changing it would cause that much of a problem. If so, why didn't I have a problem in the first 80000 miles that I didn't change my oil. And trust me, I beat my rear every day. Before my subframes, I pulled over 50 side panel dents from take/torque offs. Not sure if this pinion nut thing is it or if the manufacturers are putting out half ass gears and not standing by it.

I believe the "break in" is more for the bearings to seat than gears meshing. Gears are heat treated in heat cycles in excess of 1500 degrees, theres nothing a few 200-300 degree heat cycles will do to help them establish a pettern. GIVE IT UP ALREADY. I have owned two rear wheel drive cars since they were new with no gear whine. I can gaurenntee you I did not drive either of them in 15 mile increments for 10 times real easy when i brought the cars home from the dealers. Did you? I highly doubt AAM takes the time to run their axles prior to selling them. If the install was done correctly there will be no whine. PERIOD

Agreed. My post was to illustrate that even with proper break in, these gears sometimes have problems. Likely it's the fault of the installer most of the time.