I bought a set of thirds that had 4.62 R&P put in. Looked good, clean, wear pattern looked good. Guy said he ran em for a year and decided he wanted to go bigger and get toy axles. Anyway now I have a noise from what sound s like the rear of the rig. I was thinking maybe driveline?? The noise isnt a high pitch like R&P but sounds more like a clickity clickity only when I let off the gas. Kinda like the u joints a binding. Anyone have any thoughts?

the nut holding your flange onto the rear third member is not tight enough.
when you let off the gas, the ring gear drives the pinion on the 'backside' of the teeth. what's happening is that the end of the pinion is contacting the diff case and grinding against it.
well, probably, it happens.
under load, the pinion tries to push itself away from the carrier. under coasting conditions, when the ring drives the pinion, it sort of pulls the pinion towards it.
take it to a shop and have things properly set up.

Anyone know the cost to set up a 3rd member is? I want an idea befor I go to a shop. Anyone know of a good person to do this in siskiyou county?

thrashed pinion bearings sound like that... ask me how i know.

cajun is right on the money with thrust/play on acceleration/deceleration. when i've built diffs with "cans" i've found that sometimes the pinion nose will ever so softly contact the can. if your carrier is such that pinion shims have to be on the thicker side, this is a possibility. also, there are different specs for pinion bearings for suzuki, with a different taper. if you use bearings and races that are not a matched set, it'll be trouble. and yes, lockers are hard on crush sleeves. enough beating and you'll have a bearing problem soon enough if things aren't set up perfectly. also, spring wrap will do the very same thing on coast/decel, so check your yokes for signs of contact. let's see... carrier must be square in housing, preload has to be set right (i use the spring scale method from the fsm), your driveshafts have to be in phase, axles and housing need to be straight, axle bearings intact... gotta jack the vehicle up and wiggle everything, see what has play, and r/r it.

crash sleves suck! thats why on toy builds you see solid spacers used! lockers will continue to crush the sleves. if you pinion is lose you will see oil come out of it at best, at worst well SNAP and now you will find out the cost on setting up a 3rd the hard way. i would take the time to find a set of toy axles and get them set up right and trash the sami, kick axles. there just not enough any kind of real wheeling and they will bend.

probably $200 to set it up if you drop it off. they say about 3 hours shop labor usually.

i was just talking to DakAttack about diff setup, he found a shop in san diego that will do a complete diff rebuild and install a locker for just a bit over the cost of the locker and bearings alone. i was pretty impressed with that.

on that note, my crush sleeves are shot. it doesn't take much. i reckon i'll use measured sections of copper pipe instead. if the diff is built such that you have to play with shims to adjust pinion depth, why the hell not shim the bearing preload as well instead of using that stupid crush sleeve?

thrashed pinion bearings sound like that... ask me how i know.

X2 I just had the exact same problem. Swapped out thirds and it went away. I rotated the old pinion by hand and could hear the noise.

i was just talking to DakAttack about diff setup, he found a shop in san diego that will do a complete diff rebuild and install a locker for just a bit over the cost of the locker and bearings alone. i was pretty impressed with that.

on that note, my crush sleeves are shot. it doesn't take much. i reckon i'll use measured sections of copper pipe instead. if the diff is built such that you have to play with shims to adjust pinion depth, why the hell not shim the bearing preload as well instead of using that stupid crush sleeve?

I belive that is what alot of toy diff builders are doing simmilar, I belive allpro is selling solid spacers and shim kits

ok so to add to this, and feel free to bash because I know your gonna. Its got the kick carrier not sammi. Also what is driveshaft phase? The bearings looked and felt good but I didn't put them under much load out of the housing. Also notice more drag, could the backlash be to tight? With all the problems this is still better than what I had. The last ones had a bad wear pattern and made so much noise 40mph and above that I almost needed hearing protection to drive to work.

ok for the toy's spacers can be found at marlin,allpro,and lowrange off road, and trail gear.

next drive shaft phase has to do with the u-joints. they should line up, the caps on the fixed sid should line up with the ones on the slip side.