ring gear and pinion whine

gpp

Member
Jul 3, 2005
137
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if you put a set of gears in your car and they whine real bad can you reset it up to get rid of it or are you stuck with the noise?mine is really bad on the coast side and i need to do something.they are 4.10 by richmond gears. i have been told that if they whine from the beginning there is no way to eleminate it.
 
Two common types of gear whine:

1) Gears whine from improper installation
2) Gears whine from break in / method of production


For Option 1:

The gears will whine all the time. This can be from poor backlash settings or the contact pattern being off on the gears. Most of the time, this type of gear whine is associated with rear end 'thunks'

For Option 2:

When the gears are produced, the are straight cut. Meaning that all of the corners are cut to an exact 90 degree. With this 'sharp' corner and the constant sliding in / out of position you can get whine. This type of whine will typically go away over the course of a couple months. Sometimes it could take longer, sometimes shorter.

If the shop did a good job, you might just want to wait it out. BTW: Richmond Gears are notoriously louder than FRPP ones.
 
Re-check the pattern. :nice:
Numerically higher gears are more prone to this. Richmonds have a lot of nickel in them and a competent driveline tech can set them up to be quiet. Don't let anyone tell you that you have to live with it. Make them do it right! Gears are lapped at the factory, and as long as you don't break them you can set them up again and again.
 
I agree that your diff needs to be set-up again... It will only get worse and not better. The longer you let it go like this, the gears will wear and you will not be able to re-set the clearances and have quiet gears.

Unfortunatley - now you have to go back to the shop that did it and explain that a bunch of guys on the Internet told you blah blah blah....
 
needs to be reshimmed. Had to tear my rear end apart 10-12 times to get the whine out. The '05's are a little bit different. A heads up to anyone planning on getting gears, make sure you mark everything with a marker. Makes things much easier. They must be shimmed just right, that's most likely your problem, though Richmond's will almost always whine a little bit.