Posted: Sep 19 2005 at 3:39pm | IP Logged

Went fishing with a freind for the weekend in Beaufort SC. Its about 3 hours to drive. Took my truck and boat. About 4 miles from the ramp the rearend went out. We are talking alot of noise and crunching sounds. The engine just revs up and the tires do not move. Had to use the 4WD to get it off the road to a safe place. The local dealer is about 30 miles farther down the coast. I had to call the wife to come and get us and what gear we could carry. Truck is in Hilton Head. and the boat is in Beaufort. As of 4pm today they are "accessing" the problem. No rental car. Other appointments to got to as well as the job to pay for the truck.

WTF

Posted: Sep 28 2005 at 2:38pm | IP Logged

I don't know if this is a stupid question or not but...

When these rearends go out...are they locked at the time?

Posted: Sep 29 2005 at 11:00am | IP Logged

The rearend was not locked in at the time. The only time you can lock the rearend is when you are in 4lo. Any other time it will not let you lock it in. Mine was going about 5 mph getting ready to turn into a drive way. No jerking, no spinning, no aduse. When I found out about the first rearend was going bad was after reading post on this wab site and decided to change to synthetic. The magnetic drain plug had parts of the spider gears and the fluid was silver and stiff. Again no abuse from me. Who else is having this problem?

Posted: Oct 02 2005 at 11:49am | IP Logged

 The rearend gears in my '05 Crew Cab LE 4x4 Offroad went yesterday just as I was starting off from a pedestrian crossing. Big bang, lots of crunching noises and initailly the rearend of the truck starting prancing up and down. Barely was able to make it into a nearby parking lot before it reached the flat spot in the gears and just stayed there grinding the teeth down. Had to put it into 4WD to move it out of the way till the flatbed came. My bet is that it's the Crown (ring) Gear since it'll drive ahead for a few feet and then when it reaches the bad spot, it'll just stop and you can hear the gears grinding. I have never towed anything with this truck, have hardly used 4X4, have never even engaged the dif lock and have not been "off-roading" with it. In fact, where I live (Cayman Islands) we don't have a single hill to climb over! My truck has 12,500 miles on it so I'm not very happy right now.

The amazing thing about this is that the rearend is supposed to be a Dana 44 which has been around from at least the early 70's. As far as I know, this diff has been used by just about every major vehicle manufacturer in the US and was used in everything from '71 4x4 Broncos to 80-82 Corvettes. I have never heard about any of them giving problems but I know enough to know that it only takes a crappy heat-treat (or the lack thereof) on a set of gears to make them junk, so I'm thinking that Nissan (or their gear supplier) must have dropped the ball somewhere with the diiff setup. It may just be the differential gears themselves from what I'm reading here, so it might be possible to replce the differential unit with an aftermarket piece like an Auburn or Eaton. Anyone know of anybody who has done this? I'll glady give up the Electric lock up since I wouldn't want to have to rely on crappy gears to get me out of a bog anyway.

 I've also seen on this forum that some Titans came with little or no diff oil, which is inexcusable as far as I'm concerned. I'm pulling mine down today so I'll report back with what I find. My problem is that my local Nissan Dealer doesn't even sell Titans as he imports Japanese model only, so they wouldn't be of any help if I even wanted it. All in all, this really sucks, since I like to buy American, and this Truck is after all, made in the USA, and the Dif is a Dana, of all things, so this is really disappointing. I really hope someone figures out a fix for this problem because otherwise I really love this truck.