Okay so this seems maybe a little serious?
It would appear that my ARB diff cover is making, or made, contact with my ring gear. Well, more likely the ring gear bolts.
I recently found water contamination in my diff and I've been draining and refilling my diff every other weekend to clean it all out. At the same time I installed an ARB cover and Lubelocker gasket.
On this 4th drain-and-fill I noticed a groove cut into the inside of the cover that lines up perfectly with the ring gear bolts.
This probably explains the large amounts of metal I had on the drain plug magnet the 2nd time I drained and refilled my diff.
I just assumed it was from the water contamination, but maybe it was from the cover contacting the gear.
I spun the gear around completely and thankfully it doesn't look like the bolts or the gear show any sort of damage.
Uhm... wtf? Did I do something wrong? I tossed my stock cover when I installed the ARB cover so I can't just put that one back on. I don't know if the cover is still making contact but there's no changes in how it drives. And this most recent drain-and-fill didn't have any metal shavings on the drain plug.
I once saw a thread about something similar from another member here but now I can't find it. Anyone experience this?
EDIT:
So obviously I'm a fucking idiot because this is very likely the noise I WAS hearing in this
thread.
That noise went away at the 3rd drain-and-fill so I assumed the noise was indeed related to the fluid. It was a night and day difference. It was still making noise, then I drained the oil and refilled it and it wasn't making noise. So I figured "Cool, all the contaminated fluid has been drained out finally."
Maybe I was WRONG and the noise was absolutely the contact. But why was it only making the noise on deceleration and not all the time?
Do I pitch this cover and go back to a stock one? Should I get a Titan finned cover and then maybe get a diff guard or the Rocky Road diaper? Or should I just get an Offroad Gorilla cover even though it doesn't have the ring gear groove for proper oil flow?
I feel so fucking dumb. I even checked the cover once or twice before for any signs of contact and didn't see anything. So I'm blind or a damn idiot or just a fucking blind goddamn idiot.
