bad noise coming from the transmission

[owens]

hi I have just bought a cheap k reg vitara 1.6 and it is making quite i lot of noise when i drive it and does sound like classis diff noise but as far as i can tell it is coming from the middle to the car, It makes this noise at all times, at what ever speed and in what ever gear though it is particularly loud if you load the transmittion by trying to acelerate from a low speed in 5th. the noise is also pesent when coasting out of gear. This is all in 2wd and i have not as yet tried 4wd. the car passed its mot recently and has done about 2k since then and there are no adviseries regarding cv joints or bearings

Any thoughts be before on this one before i start but transfer boxes/diffs

Cheers

[Jordi]

Bearings?

Thats all there really is in the middle of the car. If it was props id of said it would be more of a clunk.

Jordi

[Boyes]

I believe it will be gearbox/transferbox related unfortunately on vitara's they are one. First thing I would do personally is drop the gearbox oil, see what colour it is and if there is any metal chunks/filings etc in it.

If the oil is grey then then quite possibly there is quite a bit of wear, if there's chunks then you'll have found your problem lol.

[dan_2k_uk]

If the oil is grey then then quite possibly there is quite a bit of wear

If there is none then probably even worse

[ScottieJ]

I've always found vit gearboxes to have a bit of a whine to them, even swapped a gearbox because of it and the new one was the same. Not sure if I just notice it more because I have no sound deadening and polybush mounts that don't have much give.

The gearbox and transfer box are seperate units (just mated) so you need to check both, the transfer box used sae80w90 gl5 and the gearbox uses sae80w90 gl4 or an equivelant yellow metal safe gear lubricant. Quite often people put normal gear oil in the gearboxes and this doesn't do them much good, you usually get a bit of a bronze tint in the oil when you drain it if this is the case.

[owens]

Thanks for you replies, so is the general consensus that this is a transferbox problem. It is very loud, i can hear the sound bouncing back to me off of walls when i pass them

[ScottieJ]

Can you hear it if you put the tbox in neutral and then go through the gears? If no then that should give you an idea if its the tbox or not, there isn't really much to go wrong in the hi 2wd on vit tboxes as its just straight through with no gears. But if a previous owner has neglected the oil changes, used the wrong oils or drowned the vit and got water in the transmission then it could be either really, draining the oils will tell you a lot, drain each into clean and seperate containers so you can have a good look and see how much oil was in each.