Front End Whine occurs when accelerating
 

I have a 94 FWD with a whine in the front end that increases in both pitch and volume only under load of acceleration. As soon as I take my foot off the gas or coast at any speed, the whine stops. Starts again at same intensity when I touch the gas to accelerate again. I have already done the $1 O-ring replacement for the power steering pump w/ no change. :confused:

While I was at it, I changed the internal tranny filter, added an external tranny filter, and changed the differential fluid. Differential had a noticable amount of fine metallic flecks stuck on the magnetic plug. :eek:

I'm hoping this might be a power steering issue as opposed to the differential. It's pretty clear that there's an order of magnitude difference in cost.

Anyone else have a similar experience? Most threads I've seen for a differential problem reported a whine when the load is removed, not when it was applied. And since this only happens under load, it's hard to jack the car up to try and isolate it with a stethoscope.

Ideas???

-Dan

Re: Front End Whine occurs when accelerating
 

I'd say unfortunately that's sounding like a differential to me. The metal in the diff fluid is a bad sign.

Re: Front End Whine occurs when accelerating
 

My girlfriend's '95 had the same whine so she had a shop take a look at it. They indicated that the noise was coming from her "transfer case". Knowing that they probably meant the front differential she drove it home and we checked the front diff... completely dry.
She posted on here wondering what to expect now and was told that she has a bad bearing now and that her front diff probably won't last very much longer.
We put in mobile1 75w90 full synthetic and the the whine has quieted to the point where it's barely audible.

Her diff whine only occurred when she was off the throttle. The fact your diff whine occurs under load makes little difference. Metal shavings in your fluid may be a good indication that something isn't right.

Re: Front End Whine occurs when accelerating
 

Sadly, this is kinda what I suspect as well. :(

My "hope" was the fact that I had experienced ongoing power steering "leakage" problems sometime back and perhaps this had caused a bearing to begin going in the pump. BUT, it's holding fluid just fine now and the steering is quite responsive.

I'll hold off on expensive replacement options for a day or two just in case someone out there has had similar symptoms that were caused by something OTHER than the differential. If so, I'm all ears...

Thanks!

-Dan