I had a customer come in last week with an '04 titan banging very loud in the rear diff. He said it first did it when he 'stepped on it' making a right turn, now it does it anytime you try to move the truck.
I did a little research and found lots of owners with issues. It appears Nissan skimped and went with a Dana unit instead of there own. I called some dealers around and found they were replacing many of them under warranty- fronts and rears.
The weak spot seems to be the single roll pin that holds the spider gear shaft in the carrier. If you spin an inside tire around a corner, the friction of the spider gears zinging around twists the shaft and shears the roll pin leaving the shaft to fly out of the carrier and slam into the pinion gear- BANG.
Apparently, Nissans' fix is to replace the whole axle, but the only difference is the finned aluminum cover plate and light-weight synthetic gear oil.A TSB was issued for the thin syn oil change back when they started seeing some failures. In the bulletin they even state that they wouldn't cover a failed diff that didn't have the fluid changed per this TSB-as if the factory gear oil was the problem, not the junk Dana 44.
Just curious if anyone knows anything more to this or how big the problem really is.I think the real cure would be to machine oiling grooves in the shaft and spider gears as well as drilling for solid pins on both ends of the shaft. Or just replace it with a four spider LSD unit like it should've had.
Thanks for any help.Kirk
How many Titan owners here have had differential issues??
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boomstriker
- Posts: 64
- Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2003 9:30 am
Re: How many Titan owners here have had differential issues?? (boomstriker)
Mines in the shop as we speak getting a new rear end put in... I heard there was a change/redesign in mid/early '06 but that just be the small things you mentioned.
... even the guys at Nissan USA design center (by me here in San Diego) brought up the "exploding differentials" when I mentioned the issues of breaks, seats, window switches, heater controls among other thing that got my '04 lemon - ed when I was invited in for a Q/A session about the Titan.
The service guy played dumb when I said I was surprised he didn't have a stock pile of rear ends for just this occasion, claiming that he had only seen a couple go bad. My symptoms were close to what you described.
... even the guys at Nissan USA design center (by me here in San Diego) brought up the "exploding differentials" when I mentioned the issues of breaks, seats, window switches, heater controls among other thing that got my '04 lemon - ed when I was invited in for a Q/A session about the Titan.
The service guy played dumb when I said I was surprised he didn't have a stock pile of rear ends for just this occasion, claiming that he had only seen a couple go bad. My symptoms were close to what you described.
