Let me set the stage:

Was leaving the neighborhood last thursday in -8 degree temperature,
had the truck in drive because the road conditions weren't the greatest
and was crawling along to let things kind of warm up.

Turned left and the truck kind of made what felt like a jerking motion and felt
like it was sluggish. Switched to OD and felt like things were somewhat normal
except for a rubbing/whining kind of noise. I finished my drive to my bus(4 miles)and then took it directly to the dealer as to hopefully not do any more damage.

But any reasons why this would fail?

Thanks in Advance

 

what kind of truck??????????

 

Sorry...

'06 Megacab 3500

 

At any point in time did you or anyone else ever replace a leaky pinion seal on the truck?

 

Nope,

I am the original owner. Truck had 13 miles on it when I drove it off
the lot...8 of them were mine (lol). It's a daily driver and I do tow
a trailer in the summer. But I definitely don't beat it up.

Just seems odd that it would fail on a fairly new truck (49,500 miles)

 

i had to replace my front and rear @35k and the front again @45

 

It is possible that the pinion bearing could have had too much preload on it from the factory, or it could have been a defective bearing.

I think that Dodge has a 7 year / 70K mile warranty on the powertrain, so I would try to go that route first. Unfortunately, I don't know that I would trust too many dealerships to do specialized differential work correctly.

 

Replaced the bearings or the seals?

 

it was leaking everytime so for sure it was the seals and i cant remember if they did a bearing too. the dealer did it.....

 

You would have gotten an invoice from the dealer when they did the work, it will tell you if they replaced the bearing when they did the seals.

CD

 

Just curious if you had serviced the diff recently ( checked for quantity and quality of fluid) or noticed any evidence of fluid leakage?

I replaced mine (pinion bearings) while I was in Colorado this summer in a campground in front of my RV. That was FUN. Had to borrow tools for 60 miles to get the job done. I carry tools with me but not enough tools to do that job. On the bright side, the weather was nice. My pain was self inflicted on this though. I would agree that it would be odd to have these bearings fail on a truck of this age ( mileage).

 

a good friend on mine bought a brand new 1500 mega cab a yr or so ago and it had a shutter when he would take off...turned out that the factory didn't fill the rear diff w/ fluid before it was shipped to the dealer. they had to replace the entire rear end i believe after that.

 

When I was a parts guy, we would see a couple pinion bearings bad every day,not unusual, I always figured the problem was made in (china)