I jacked up the rear end and shook the wheels, both wheels have an equal amount of in and out play of what feels to be about an 1/8 of an inch.

The wheels also turn pretty smoothly, no noticeable grinding or roughness.

I also checked the diff fluid and looked to be about an inch below the drain plug, seems unlikely but could that be the problem?

 

Hubs are up front.

 

Duh lol, the noise seems to come from the rear tho

 

I'm not sure how to hilight so i deleted the rest of your post to cover what I'm asking about. what kind of diff is it? does it have a drain plug on the cover or what? if not how did you check the level?

I know some rearends are different but on mine there is no drain plug the fluid is drained by taking the cover off, and refilled thru a hole on the side of the pumpkin.

I dont know what kind of setup you have but it seems to me that having fluid below the DRAIN plug should never happen.

 

The rear axle bearings can be checked by jacking each rear wheel off the ground and put a pry bar/2x4 under the tire and lever it up. There should be no movement of the axle in the tube.

If the diff fluid is low the question to ask is where did it go. It can leak out the cover gasket, the pinion seal, or the axle seals. Do you have any fluid out around the front of the pinion shaft? Have you pulled the rear drums to see if fluid is leaking into the drums/brakes?

If there are no leaks that need repaired I would refill the diff fluid and see if that helps the problem.

 

The plug I was talking about would be the fill plug, sorry for the confusion.

I'll try adding fluid, not sure where it would leak from because I don't see a spot in the driveway.

Any idea on gear weight?

 

No problem, now that you've said that, The way to do it is to fill the rearend up until the fluid just starts to dribble back out of the fill hole. I believe its 80/ 90 weight gear oil you should use, but I'm not positive on that, one of the other people here might know for sure.

Like Seal said it could have leaked from the cover, or maybe through the axle seals into the rear drums, but unless you know when the gear oil was changed last its hard to know how long it's had to leak out. You wouldnt be seeing a puddle from it on the ground unless it leaked that much in a day or maybe a week and if it leaked into the drums you wouldn't see a puddle at all. but ya your fluid is low and maybe that could cause some noise i really dont know, good luck!