[5 Speed]

How do you know if your carrier bearing is starting to go out? Would it be a noise or vibration? Can you tell by grabbing and trying to move?

 

[5 Speed]

The support bearing is making a whining noise at speed above 20 mph. It would come and go so finding what the noise was took time but I put the truck on jackstands after driving for a while and could listen under the car with the drivetrain moving. The whine / hiss sound is the center support bearing. The best price I can find on a OEM part is about 129 and the aftermarket parts prices are really all over the place. The lowest price DEA CENTER BEARING in the 30 dollar range with Tezuka being around 110. Anyone heard of Tezuka? I also found National and Timken both about 85. Any thoughts on the quality of any of the above.

 

[5 Speed]

In my experience squeaks coming from the driveline is a dry needle bearing in one of your driveline universal joints. It could be a leaf rubbing as the suspension loads or unloads too. When my carrier bearing went bad it was actually the bearing that the lube had dried up almost making a rubbing scraping sound. On my carrier bearing the rubber surround was fine so rubber going bad might make a different noise. I have never replaced one of the driveline universal joints on my tundra (lube them every other oil change or so) but I have replaced a fair amount on my older Toyota 4x4's and they typically squeaked when you put the first put them in gear and loaded the driveline when they are dry and in need of a change. When was the last time you lubed your driveline universal joints?.

 

[5 Speed]

Somewhere buried in the old TS there is my post where I took apart the carrier bearing and it was a Timkin bearing I believe. I posted the actual bearing number and it was quite expensive by itself when I looked it up. The original toyota rubber support was in perfect shape and mine failed because the lube had started to dry up. If you dig you will see many who replaced their carrier bearing with the 30 dollar ones and they failed very soon after replacement because of rubber failure. Now this might have been because of low quality parts or it could have been because the drive line wasn't straight. When you replace your driveline be sure to pull a string from the transmission to the rear diff and using the carrier bearing adjustment range get it as straight as possible.