bad bearings
 

anyone had any trouble with bearings in the rear on their pony? maybe i am getting paranoid, which i can be pretty guilty of, but the rear end in mine feels like its getting or already has a little too much slack

Oh Yeah... Let me tell you about my bearind problems.....


I had my car lowered with Steeda Springs and put in the full shock/strut/quad kit as well. Also, I had the 3.73 installed and Posi unit rebuilt w/ 3 clutches instead of 2. Well, about a month goes by, and my rear bearings start to squeal horribly, lie metal on metal noise. I bring it to the shop, they say it's my brakes. I bring it to the break shop, they say it's the U-Joints. So, I spend 75.00 on getting U-Joints replaced, didn't fix it (pissed off!!). Bring it back to the rear end shop, they still don't think it's the rear end, so I tell them I had the joints replaced and the brakes re-done. So they finally take the rear apart and put it back together and replace the pinion bearing at the same time. Wow, no more noise..... so, relieved that the noise is gone, I drive around about a month... damn noise comes back, again... so I bring it back to the rear end shop, they say they think since I changed so much suspension that my pinion angle is prob skewed (by now, I have full G-Trac kit), so I bring it to the race body shop, they put in on lift and track out my entire pinion angle.. It's correct for my yr/suspension. So, what could be wrong???? ... Here's what we found, at the rear of my RearHousing they notice that there are a lot of dents in my upper body right below where the spare tire sits... Ok, those shouldn't be there, ... We check the top of the differential housing directly below where the snubber sits, and it is perfectly polished, and the tip of the body snubber is clean... So, my car being lowered 1.75 in. in rear shortened te distance between the housing and snubber causing it to bottom out, this bottoming out caused the rear-end to roll under pressure and increase my pinion angle way beyond acceptable limits for that short time. This in turn was casuing the T/A cover to strike the body next to the spare tire location and cause the dents. As a result of this skewing of pinion angle, my pinion bearing was slowly being bent outwards towards the front of the car, this was causing the noise. The body shop cut 1.75in off the snubber, the rear end shop replaced the pinion bearing again and removed the little plastic cover in front of it, and I haven't had any problems since then....... ----- It took 3 months and a lot of back and forth betwenn shops to figure this out.. Please pass this info on to anyone you know having rear end noises that can't be located........

its odd that you mention brakes....when you jam on the breaks in mine (almost to the point of lock up), there was this HORRIBLE grinding noise...had the breaks replaced..waited a while (didnt want to screw up new brakes) to test, then one day some yahoo cuts in front of me on the interstate (i am doing 75, they are doing 50 in a 70 mph zone)...i hit the brakes hard, and guess what? Horrible grinding noise...sounds like bearing problems to me...have an opinion on this?

"the rear-end to roll under pressure"

what the hades does this mean??

When I would hit bumps, the rear end would move vertically, like it is supposed to to absorb shock... Well, since there was 1.75in less space to the snubber right above the middle of the differential housing, when I hit a bump hard enough, the force of the car body going down, or the read end coming up pushed it far enough up that it hit the snuber, well, since it was still moving up the snubber puxhed down on it, causing it to rotate.. When it rotated, it angled the nose of the pinion gear towards the ground, this applied pressure to the pinion bearing (more that it could handle). Normally the rear could have moved that extra 1.75 in before it contacted the snubber... but, since my car has been lowered, it was already that far down...... It's hard to explain, but real easy to see if you are looking at the car from the underneath...