Rear end whine,gears or bearings?

[bullnerd]

I just picked up my first explorer,2000 5.0 AWD.
It has a whine that i thought was coming from the front, but i saw a thread in the tech section that says the rear was common for this.

Most of the comments say the gears but the last few say its the bearings and wrong lube.

Should i just change the bearings and try it or do the gears also.I would be very happy to be able to just replace the bearings.I like the truck so far but am a little bummed with the whine.

Thanks for any help ,I need it.

 

[turboexplorer]

Post miles on the truck and I feel you on that one, the AWD sucks for trying to find things like that because you have to have the whole truck in the air and is hard to isolate. First though would be to try some new gear oil with the RIGHT additive and drive for a few hundred miles to work in additive and if no fix then would look into the more expensive things. Welcome to the forum!!!!

 

[bullnerd]

Could it be that simple?

Someone mentioned that all he did was change the fluid and the whine went away,that would be great.

Whats a good brand gear oil?

It has 130K on it.

Thanks for your help,i've been reading everything i can about explorers.

 

[99ex22]

Mine also started whining last week. when it first started you could barely hear it and it slowly got louder and louder the more I drove it. I just replaced my pinion seal a couple months back and put LS additive and valvoline synthetic lube. I guess ill try motorcraft and see if that takes care of it.... Any other ideas?

 

[tweet02]

Hey I just bought a 2003 ex, it is a 4x4, and i have whine noise also. I was told its my bearings in the back. The truck has 74k on it, what do you guys think, and how hard is it to change the rear bearings!! Thanks

 

[99ex22]

after a long day of wheeling the noise has got twice as loud. Im going to try and get it in the air to have a look at it hopefully on tuesday.

 

[bullnerd]

From the searching i've done on here,it looks like i'm just going to replace all the bearings in the rear.

Dont think an oil change is going to solve my problems.