I've had a quaife ATB installed in my 08 base model for a little over a year, and it's been noisy since the day I had it put in (specifically it would whine under load).

I eventually grew tired of the noise and took it back to the installer to see if anything was wrong (I suspected incorrect backlash between the ring and pinion), and besides I have heard that the quaife was supposed to be pretty much silent so I was concerned that something may be wrong.

Anyways, when we took the diff apart, we saw that the runout on the quaife unit itself was pretty high (0.003" for the flange that the ring gear bolts onto). Nissan's spec in the repair manual calls for 0.002" or less with the ring gear installed, and we are seeing greater than that just in the differential itself (it can only get worse once the ring gear is installed, as the gear itself may have a little runout of it's own. It's fine as long as it is within the tolerance Nissan specifies).

Anyways, I've attached the relevant part of the service manual which states the specification for the ringout, which is .002".


Here is a link to the video I took, it's bad quality but the dial shows that the runout exceeds 0.003".

http://www.flickr.com/photos/73665057@N05/7177202461/

My question is, has anyone that has installed a quaife diff run into an issue like this? If so, how was it resolved? Is the diff defective? I did see someone else post on here that they had to get the internals of their quaife unit "shimmed" in order to fix runout, I'm wondering if I have to do the same...

 

What is the backlash of the ring gear? What did the pattern look like for both cruise and coast? If the backlash is set correctly (if it's between .0039 and .0059 if memory serves me correctly when I set up my year end) then the gear mesh pattern is used to judge if the pinion depth is correct or not.

 

Do you have another diff you can put into that case and measure the runout on it by chance? Just curious for it says in the manual that a deformed differential case can cause the runout to be out of spec too.

 

Just wondering but is Quaife like "cwayf" or "cwaif" or "cwa-ee-fe"...LOL! Sorry but I can't recall anyone pronouncing it.

I hear some people call Bride seats "Bride" and others "brid". Same with Recaro as "ree-car-o" and "wreak-a-ro".

 

I'm getting the work done at the dealer and they actually warrantied the whole pumpkin. So it has brand new everything with the exception of the differential unit itself which is about a year old.

When you worked on yours did you notice that kind of runout?

 

I haven't mounted the Quaife in yet but I will be mounting it soon here. I think I'll measure the runout on the VLSD and the Quaife without the ring gear on it now to see how they compare when I'm doing the install.

 

I did measure the runout but I had the dial indicator on it wrong for I was measuring having it facing the ring gear instead of angled towards the diff flange if that makes sense. I had measured I think .003 or so which was above the measurement but I wasn't doing it right so it really doesn't give any info, sorry.

 

Got everything put back together and bolted onto the car.

My mechanic rotated the ring gear a bit and tried bolting it at different points to the differential until he got a much better 0.0015" runout. He said it was because the ring gear itself was a lot sturdier and once you bolt it to the diff it helped to decrease the runout that we were seeing on just the diff itself.

In any case, the noise seems reduced from before but it still whines a little bit, although its kind of hard to hear over my exhaust at this point. I also can't tell whether the whining sound is coming from the diff or the transmission either. Guess I'll just drive it and hope it doesn't get any worse.