Centre Bearing

[Pat0]

Hi Lads,

My VY ute has been making some strange noises of late.

Under anything but very light acceleration in all gears (but mainly 3rd, 4th (especially) and 5th) there will be a quite loud grinding noise between 1500 & 2100 RPM. After that its gone.

When idling in neutral its making a rough ticking noise that stops when you put the clutch in.

I've had a chat to my mechanic and he reckons its the centre bearing, and is making the noise worse in higher gears due to more load on the drivetrain. The car is moderately lowered with it being a bit lower at the back than the front, and he thinks this is a contributing factor due to more load being placed further down the back.

What are your thoughts?

Anyone had a similar experience?

Anyone think it could be something completely different?

Open to all ideas.

[STEEV888]

sounds exactly the same as my excel...

[Calaber]

Hi Lads,

My VY ute has been making some strange noises of late.

Under anything but very light acceleration in all gears (but mainly 3rd, 4th (especially) and 5th) there will be a quite loud grinding noise between 1500 & 2100 RPM. After that its gone.

When idling in neutral its making a rough ticking noise that stops when you put the clutch in.

I've had a chat to my mechanic and he reckons its the centre bearing, and is making the noise worse in higher gears due to more load on the drivetrain. The car is moderately lowered with it being a bit lower at the back than the front, and he thinks this is a contributing factor due to more load being placed further down the back.

What are your thoughts?

Anyone had a similar experience?

Anyone think it could be something completely different?

Open to all ideas.

You say that when you are idling in neutral, the noise is a rough ticking sound that disappears when you depress the clutch. If that's the case, it's not likely to be the centre bearing as I'm assuming that the car, and therefore the tailshaft, is stationary, so how could it make any noise?

I would suspect either the clutch throw out bearing or the input shaft bearing. If the throw out bearing is in permanent contact with the pressure plate, it will eventually spin itself dry of lubricant and become quite noisy. The input shaft bearing would be spinning at all times when the engine is running until you depress the clutch and the shaft slows down to stop. I had an input bearing collapse years ago in an HD and it made a grinding noise at lower speeds which disappated as the speed rose.