Shop recommendations for differential rebuild?

[Luis A.]

Hi guys,

Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the driving season. My diff has started to hiss and hum over the last couple of thousand miles and I'd like to have it rebuilt, not swapped. Not willing to tackle this myself due to time constraints.

Any recommendations based on personal experience and reputation of the shop.

Thanks in advance, Luis

 

[sfdon]

Howdy Luis- any whine at a specific speed?
I usually find gears are worn at a certain road speed or the spiders are shot.
Not much you can do.
Clutch parts are on Ebay if you have lsd.
I use Petes gear shop in hayward

 

[Luis A.]

Hi Don, more than a whine, it's a hiss ("SSSHHHHHH") at a constant pitch down to about 3 mph. It gets drowned with all other noises when faster than 10-20 MPH. There's also the hum/slight growl when on overrun.

 

[rsporsche]

the e30 m3 crowd highly recommends Dan Fitzgerald at Diffsonline.com the majority of what he works on are BMW diffs. [email protected]
several of the race shops use him - Turner motorsports, Bimmerworld and Mario at VSR recommends their work..

if you contact Dan, also ask how his project of developing a LSD carrier for our open diffs is coming along.

 

[sfdon]

I find the best answer for is toss bad internals and gear sets and hold on to the good ones. Bad internals don't get fixed.
Get enough and you can make what you need.
Keep in mind there is early and late sideloaders and the parts don't mix.
Sometimes I think Diff Dave from LA got all the Diff's in California...

 

[sfdon]

Sounds like a spinning bearing?

 

[Bert Poliakoff]

I had my lsd side loader rebuilt by a local diesel truck shop that specialized in tractor trannys and diffs. Charged me $300 labor. I supplied the parts. I bought my bearings at a bearing supply shop as bearings are pretty much universal in size. Gears were very slightly worn but a good bit better than margineable. I had an open diff with primo gear set in it so I had them use those as they were just sitting there... IIRC parts excluding the bearings, meaning seals, a large O ring and a crush washer for the pinion was maybe $150 and I don't remember the bearing costs. So, hopefully this will give you a baseline to work from`