I really hate to tell you this, But when I was shopping for my 2500, I read a lot of the fine print. The 1500 comes with a LD 9.25" corporate rear end. The "LD" stands for Light Duty. I know in the future I'll be towing some heavy stuff occasionally, so I opted for the 3/4 ton chasis. Take it to the dealer and let them mess with. Chances are that they will stuff a whole new center section in it and send the old back for core.

 

Not happy about resurecting this post - not happy at all.

Turns out the original noise that I wrote about to start this post was a bad pinion bearing. Got that replaced - all is good. But wait....

Went out this week with a load of crap to the landfill, on the way back the rearend makes awful noise when I let off the gas. Get to 1 block from home and everything locks up, drivshaft drops to the ground.

Appears the pinion nut backed off, and what I saw while I was waiting for the wrecker, the pinion gear pulled into the ring gear/carrier, thus I wasn't moving anywhere.

The pinion nut actually backed completely off. It's held in between the back ujoint and the pinion flange.

The shop that replaced the pinion bearing a few months (and only a feww 1000 miles ago) was real good - got a wreaker right away, has preliminarily admitted it was their work that was to fault, etc.

I'm currently going thru some posts I found in search on this forum, trying to get an idea if this rearend is prone to a history of bad things. 2004 Ram Quad, 5.7 hemi, 9.25 readend with limited slip.

Looks like pinion seals have been an issue. Have to keep reading to find more

If anyone wants to reply directly here with knowledgable expereince/history - it would be most appreciated.

thanks

 

I called it first!!

Anyways, a pinion and bearing is such a simple mechanism, I don't think it can be a bad design. It's a nut on a threaded gear with a crush sleeve. Maybe you just had some bad luck. I would make sure this shop you are using is good.

When this originally happened, could the nut have loosened at speed, causing the gear and bearing to loosen which would case the bearing to be pusher around in it's bore. Maybe now the bearing can't sit right in its bore? This happened to me on a set of 3/4 ton Chevy axles going down the highway. Easiest solution was to source out a new rear end housing.

I think you should ask this shop for a complete inspection of the housing. Tell them you want to take a look inside too, act like you know what you are talking about if you don't. They'll never know the difference.

I'm pretty sure every manufacturer has had problems with pinion seals. I wouldn't worry too much about that.

 

You did, you did. And thank you for this other bit of input / advice / experience. I do trust the shop, they did both front and back axles on my Jeep. The guy (he's really a kid, doing lots of hard work) has contracts with city govt's all around, and his 7 stall shop is always full. I wondered what their 'bad service recovery' response would be, and was expecting headaches / disagreements with 'finding fault', but was very happy with how they did respond. .... so far.

That being said, I'm still not back into my dodge, so the jury is out yet.