Transfer Case Noise
 

Been trying to figure out if my transfer case is on its way out or not. Been hearing a small whine as of late. The sound is more of a high pitch whistle then whine. The noise isnt to loud and hasnt gotten any louder seems to only happen in gear while driving. At a stop theres no noise and with clutch engaged the noise goes away. When the tcase is going bad can it be heard in neutral as well as in gear?

Thanks

I would like to know this too. Mine makes similar noise on between 40-45 mph 5th gear with light throttle. Goes away above or lower speed. More like high pitching sound than whines. What is sign of death whine?

does the noise also happen on decel?

No matter what gear or neutral, when rolling the tcase is running, when stopped the tcase is stopped.

thanks for the post, just curious when the transfer case if going bad would the whine in neutral be as loud as when the cars accelerating?

yea it should be cuz the tcase runs with the wheels. In any gear and with clutch engaged and disengaged. Basically youll hear your tcase whine as your car is driving in between a certain speed.

Try it out. if you hear a whine take it out of gear... try engaging the clutch, if its still there its the tcase.

thats my .02 since i did everything above to be sure it was my tcase going out.

well to be honest if the noise, isnt constant or going up and down with speed, then could it be possible you maybe hearing a walbro whine, which those fuel pumps are known for, if you clutch in the noise goes away, it could be possible you might have either a trans issue or possibly the fluid thats in there might need to be changed, or it might be wrong fluid? Although, my trans make a bit of noise at higher speeds not a lot but some. However Ive got 40k almost 50 k on my trans since i bought my car used, and its been that way since ive had it.

Can the noise still be made if the car is not moving and just by accelerating?

ive been having the exact same issue ^. sound can only be heard in 5th gear light throttle only. im going to change the fluids soon to see if that gets rid of it, im just about due for a fluid change anyway.

Subd, i have a pretty noticeable whine as well.

You gotta make sure its not your normal transmission whine, our cars are notorious for freaking us out when it comes to the death whine. Heres a link to what the death whine sounds like from a video I found, its towards the end were you can aprreciate it the most.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au8fOnZ1uNQ

when i was in the market to buy an evo i looked at one and it had very noticable death whine just like in that video. my car sounds nothing like that but my question is does it start out as a slight whine and grow into that loud death whine? how can you know its about to crap out?

I have BOTH noises right now, so I'll clarify:

The light, higher-pitched whine that you get only under light load (such as cruising on the highway) but goes away under heavier throttle or decel is the rear diff, and it's making noise for the same reason the t-case makes noise, only that it's not chewing itself up.

The "death whine" starts out quietly at the lower pitch you hear in that video and just gets louder and louder as the wear progresses. They sound totally different, and when (not if ;) ) your t-case goes out you'll know it's that and nothing else, it's a very definitive sound.

The solution for the rear diff whine is to turn up the radio, the solution for the t-case whine is a rebuild or replacement.

I have a higher pitched whine, only when its in gear. When i put the car in neutral it stops.

I need some input. I have a whine coming from the front of the car during acceleration, it gets slightly louder as I pick up speed. Then I have another whine when I get up to speed that comes from the rear.

Rear whine is rear diff.

Front whine if it's only in gears 1 and 2 is the tranny and it's normal. If it does it all the time and is lower pitched it's likely the t-case but could be a bearing on the output shaft. Never heard of those failing though, input shaft and throw-out bearings are the common failures.

Mine whines only when deaccelerating when there is force on the gear such as using the gear to slow down.. like in 4th gear doing approx 50 and slowing down it makes it and the more force the louder it gets.. im guessing this is the tranny but any other input on why it could be something else?

I'm curious too. Mine whines when the clutch is engaged and I'm turning to the right. If I'm going straight or turning left no noise. Also it's not there all the time if I turn slowly it's not there say 10mph> fluids where changed about 10000 miles ago to amsoil fluids.

lol not saying this is just you because ive done this before but theres a point where we all just start hearing crap.. could the turing to the right possibly be your tire rubbing? if you're going slow it shouldnt be as loud or not even there.. just a thought

Alright fella's could you clear my problem then?
my 04 makes a whine ONLY WHEN ACCELERATING OR GIVING IT GAS It does not matter what gear i'm in it does is. BUT the noise COMPLETELY goes away if im not accelerating or giving it gas. any answers?

Same here! Some days its louder than others. On days when i cant hear it, its super nice to ONLY hear the exhaust and i dunno if its just me but the drive just feels overall smoother when the whine isnt there and even the throttle response seems better (might just be in my head but I swear it does). Like repairmanevo8 said, the noise is only there under load and acceleration.

Now this noise has been present ever since i bought my evo about 3 months ago. I didnt notice it as much before because its my first evo and i just somehow thought the exhaust was really loud and resonating or something. The frequency/pitch of the whine goes up with speed and its definitely a whine, not a whistling noise. I'm thinking it could be a lubrication issue. Could not having enough fluid in the transfer case or just having fluid that needs replacement cause this???

I'm gonna change all my drivetrain fluids soon and hopefully it'll make the noise go away permanently. But of course there's that whole problem of underfilling the t-case if you do it according to the manual. So I might have AMS do my fluids since im sure they know what theyre doing and im afraid another mechanic would mess it up. Anyway, if anyone has fixed the noise by changing the fluids let us know, or any other input would be appreciated!

I think i have death whine. Makes noise loudest at 60 mph in any gear and goes away the faster I go. Also hear it a little on deceleration. Fluids already changed on X-fercase

This is your transfer case. It will not wine when the car is in neutral and it won't wine on decel. When it gets really bad it will grind on decel. At first it might not do it all of the time but as time goes on the higher the rpm the louder the whine/grind will get. If your doing 60 and you put it into neutral, It'll go away but you might hear the bad bearings turning if its bad enough. I drove my 04 for around 30k miles with my tcase wining and it didn't fail me. And I wasn't exactly gentle on it either.

Thats good to know. I won't be rebuilding everything until next year feb.

well this brought some confusion to closure. I'm always skeptical driving my car because every small noise i hear, i think to be the tcase, and evo's are nowhere near the quietest cars.

The rear end usually doesn't wine. I've only experienced slight grinding and mines had this grind for years never an issue

I have the same thing, only on decel while in gear. No idea what it is.

Yes your rear end will grind on decel. Sounds like the plates chattering together

thats exactly what it sounds like but its coming from up under my shifter {thumbdwn}

I've got a 2010 evo X, noise starts around 25 mph gets louder to an extent then is just present doesn't get louder necessarily with speed more as a relation to RPM's. I just bought the car at 11,000 miles on it, thought id get one before it saw to much abuse...:/ when i picked it up it had some noise, i assumed it was normal trany / diff / road noise that all evo's have... Two months later add some grinding to it and the noise has gotten louder... took it in with 13,000 miles on it last week. the dude at the dealership looks at me asks me what i think it is i tell him i think its the t-case, and he just treats me like some asshat who googled the car and came up with the most common issue or something, anyway, one rental experience later i appreciate the evo even more. i got a call saying the dealership thinks its the driveshaft and will be ordering one and put it on next week, if that doesn't work they'll replace the tranny...so far i think they're just avoiding putting a new t-case on because its evidently already had a new one put on (they checked the service records). I'm 99.9% sure its the transfer case (grinding noise right on top of me on decel gives it away) and they're just not wanting to listen to the customer or have to follow certain steps before they're allowed to replace it again. They said when they unbolted the drive shaft the noise stopped, well no duh, no load on it, morons...anyway i'll let ya'll know how it goes.

Good Luck! The only thing I have to question about that is the transfer case is always in motion if the car is moving.. why wouldnt it make the noise in acceleration?

Sorry miss spoke there. I mean it's always there from 25 mph and up. Decel and accel. Just isn't a matter of speed more because of rpm. Probably based around gearing in the transfer case and tranns.

So no one has any solution to this whining issue. I have the same problem with whining coming from under the hood (the transfercase or transmission area). The transmission and gears are filled with stock fluid. I'm thinking it's my light flywheel and my ACT clutch that caused the whining problem mainly during deceleration. The noise has been like this for almost 20k miles now since the clutch was installed. Tech said it's normal but noise is very irritating. Someone in here said that they changed the clutch back to stock or something like that and the noise disappeared. Other said it's the fluid and rebuild transfer case. I'm not sure what route I'm going what but I need to pinpoint the problem first. Anyone?

Bump. Some guys say its not others say it is. Jeeze

Well i had the whine start a couple months ago. It would whine in just about every gear even on decel in nuetral. A little louder when i got on it. Went to the strip did a quick burnout, staged, went to launch and bang.. Got the car home, pulled out my t-case and found some broken gears in the front diff. I had a feeling it was the t-case because i saw acd fluid leaking out cause i broke a mount of t-case cover neer o-ring.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o51O4...er_profilepage

There really isn't a nice easy fix. It's the bearings in the tcase that go. After a while pieces from the bearings can end up screwing up your pinion. Also a chipped tooth on your tranny pinion will make a continuous wine. But that's less likely than the tcase. I was told, they recommend every 1,500 miles or so we are supposed to pull our front passenger wheel, drop the tcase and check fluids. No I don't do this. I doubt most people do. But that's also why so many people have tcase problems. Because they dont keep up with the ridiculous maintenence these cars call for.

So the dealership here in lex got back to me and they will be replacing the transfer case after having an engineer come and make sure that was the problem. I can't tell you exactly how to determine the noise but it is pretty distinct. I think the youtube vids were pretty helpful especially in some of the evo's were you can tell they're super far gone.

Well has the noise gotten worse? 20k miles it should have gone from barely noticeable to very loud. Like I said, at first it'll be a very light wine only around 3 grand and will gradually get worse till it's all the time, decel also.

over the years of owning this car i noticed to colder it get out the louder the normal whine get

Checking your fluid is actually not that hard and its well worth doing because like you stated many times thats what causes them to go people not maintaining them properly, also you dont have to drop the Tcase you just gotta make sure the car is level having lift helps allot. Pulling it is a bit more tedious but well worth swapping out yourself other than paying somone to do it for you. You just gotta take your time and use the right fluids when your done.

I just recently blew up the Tcase. The sound for the tcase will modulate with any number of factors. Heat is one of them, and therefore the amount of fluid in the case is another. (It soaks up the heat and sound among other things).

One way to know for sure is to change or top off the Tcase fluid. Its easy and fast. I say this with conviction, because I had those sounds when I first got my evo, via salvage title. Turns out there was NO fluid in the Tcase. Filled it up, sound went away, and it was good for another 30k miles, which included lots of track abuse. I did regularly change the fluid in that Tcase after every 3 or so track days.

Recently I haven't run the evo much, and I had death whine at a track event. checked for fluid leaks, and nothing, assumed it was full. (Doh!! incomplete logic). I should have topped it off at the track, but I got stupid for some reason. The Tcase blew out on the freeway drive home. No fluid or not enough. It had been leaking out of the overflow reservoir lid for years. Slowly, but since I hadn't changed it in a while I didn't mask the issue.

The Tcase builds huge amounts of heat. If low on fluid the bearings will cook, and blow out, even though you are just tooling along the freeway.

So, if you have the sound, or think you have the sound top off the Tcase, or change fluids. See if you can make the sound go away, or at least change, because then you have your answer.

I don't know how you managed to blow yours. I was very hard on my tcase with it wining for 30k miles, never once checked fluids and it never locked up on me. At the end of my first Tcase's life I took a couple long road trips driving hundreds of miles without really stopping and didn't have that happen. Maybe I got lucky I don't know

Yours was probably not slowly leaking its fluids out of the top reservoir. That is supposed to have a lid with a valve and 4 bolts. MIne was not attached. Not something you would ever see or notice. When I took the Tcase out that lid fell out. The trouble with salvage title cars. You don't know what monkey bolted those bits of various cars into one car.

I think the track day did in the final loss of fluids. So the drive home super heated the tcase and the bearings gave out, which then ate the ring and pinion.

Lesson here is to get an easy system down to top off and check the fluids. Hand pump with oil to every track event. And, if you don't see any fluid leaking out, it could mean that all the fluid has already left a few hundred miles ago.

Yeah, it wasn't brilliant, so I hope people who read this will just at least not make my same mistake someday.

Not all parts are the same Ive heard of people going countless miles with modded engines and not blowing them and others blowing them right away. I myself had been driving my bad Tcase hard as hell for well over 30k and the damm thing was still kicking when I pulled it out.

Exactly. You had oil in yours, like you should. I bet mine was bad or not perfect when I got it, but file dup with fresh oil it will take a beating for a long time. I believe you. Then without oil, its doomed a quick and painful death.

How common is the 03transfer case whine issue?

its ur throw out bearing if engage ur clucth pedal and the noise goes away its definitely ur throw out bearing. all evos transfer cases whines on low rpms u gotta worry about when it whines on high rpms..

All Evo transfer cases don't whine, if your Transfer is whining more than likely it is going out or low on fluid your transmission is the one that has a slight whine in lower gears 1st and 2nd mainly and is totally normal. I just got the whine again but this time it is not from my Transfer its my pressure plate that is loose. When I installed my clutch I did not have a torque wrench so just tightened till I thought was enough.

It is very common if you abuse the sh!t out of it, I.E. launching it all the time, using wrong fluid and obviously running it without fluid at all. MAP and Shep Transmission have pretty legit upgrade packages and rebuilds.

Out of curiosity, what are symptoms of bad wheel bearing? Does it makes similar whine noise?

Wrong thread!!!

Never had it happen to me but I believe it clicks when driving or turning, put your car on jack stands and turn your wheels manually see if you can here clicking coming from the wheel bearing.

My rear diff just got replaced and the noise is still there. So more than likely my transfer case is on its way out also? its a low whining noise and can hear a loud grinding noise every now and then.

a lot of whine is coming from the rear. I just got someone to replace my rear diff and is it possible for the whine noise to go to the rear from transfer case, down to driveshaft to rear?

Yes,

It's very hard to tell which is what when the rear diff and transfer case break. I got off the dyno last year and immediately noticed a grinding noise coming from the back of the car. I was more than sure that it was the rear diff so I bought a used one on here(oil looked ok from the TC). After replacing it the noise was still there at which point I realized it was the dreaded transfer case. Here is the noise that I had when it was blown. Does yours sound like this?

the noise is noticeable when driving at cruising speed and decel like yours. I was like you and thought it was my rear differential. mine had metal shavings in the fluid and low on oil due to a small leak.

Mine RA do a clutch sound when desacel and boost in short time, but just when the car is hot.
Can it be T-case too?

If I drive jsut for some minutes, don't make any sound, but when it's hot (Driving in a highway or running), got this clutch sound depressing fast, like in manual car.

The sound is the same when put in Reverse, same knocking sound