I have been hearing an intermittant high pitched whine. It is not the turbo whine or whistle as I know what that is. This is louder and seems to be more centered in the truck or more toward the drivers side. It happens the loudest on deceleration and under braking. When coming to a stop i put the tranny in neutral and the noise was still present so i dont think its the transmission. Any possibilities of the U-joints? or the Diff? Thanks guys

 

I had a loud humming coming from right behind my head but only between 18 and 22 mph and only last a couple of seconds and then go way dodge replaced carrier bearing last year and now its doing it again, dealing with dodge right now with the issue. If you still have warranty let dodge find the problem.

 

Just rolled 79k so i am on my own, just hoping to find a starting point and hopefully get it resolved quickly.

 

Glad to see your post as I was going to do it as well. I have that problem and it seems to be getting worse with 52,000 km (about 30K miles) on it. I still have warranty so was thinking of taking it to the dealer but it is always nice to have as much knowledge as possible before you go in so they don't have to edited by admin waste time and also really focus my attention on getting a good response. I have an 004.5 2500 with the 48 RE and it is never abused but it has towed a 10.5K fifth wheel to the north and back plus a few local trips

 

Talked to a knowledgeable guy over the phone, he said start with the u-joints, then take diff covers off and look at wear patterns, so once it gets out of the teens maybe ill tackle that process

 

any possibilities that it might be the planetaries in the tranny?

 

My noise just like that was the ring and pinion. But you could also hear mine most of the time under "drive" or slight increase in speed but it went away during de-celleration. That led me to believe that it was the ring and pinion due to the fact there is a different contact pattern on the gear teeth during drive than there is during coast. While u-jionts and carrier bearings always rotate in a circle. it seems to me that the only difference a u-joint or carrier bearing can "feel" or work differently is under a load heavy enough or accel hard enough to cause the axle to "wrap" slightly due to the leaf springs alowing the axle to "rotate" slightly. Thus either causing the u-joint to "work" of flex at a different angle during each rotation of the driveshaft and/or the carrier bearing possibly feeling a different amount of front-to-rear pressure during axle wrap/heavy load if it can somehoe be "pushed" foreward in these cercimstances due to a slip joint not working properly. I don't really see how that could happen unless the slip joint on the driveshaft was scarred or rusted something awful. And because I have set up hundreds of ring and pinions for drag and street cars I am experienced with the sounds a gear set can make with a not-so-perfect pattern. I have even installed used gears back in the day before I could afford new stuff and heard a howl with the backlash set correctly and the pinion depth as close as I could get it and made it go away by re-setting the backlash at .002" for a couple hundred miles and then opening it back up to .007" thus forcing the gears to "re-cut" a new pattern, as they had allready been run in and hardend themselves. Just some food for thought. I have had 3 gear sets in my truck under warranty for this issue. I think AAM has not got their gear machining figured out perfect yet, at least not on the 10.5" like mine, I dont hear too much about that problem on the 11.5" models.

 

a buddy of mine had that and it was the carrier barrings

 

Almost all the 98 1500's had a bad set up on the rear pinion bearings. Mine went out at 48k. No more Dana, hello AA.

 

So how's your AA holding up? How many miles? I also have a 2003 and I have some whine from the rear diff or somewhere back there.

 

My 98 lasted 100K before the carrier bearings went. I rebuilt the whole rear and didn't have anymore problems after that. My 03 also whines too. I think its the gears, but havent had the time to tear into it yet.

 

I wish I could rebuild it myself.

The rear end is covered under the 7year/70k warranty right?

 

Yes it is covered under 7/70. And I assume your talking about the differential carrier bearings and not the driveshaft carrier bearing someone else suggested right? And the Dodge tech did say there was not pre-load on mine when the first one was replaced under warranty.