I've had some wobbling in the front end for awhile now and I've used the death wobble check list and nothing changes. Now about 2 weeks ago it started making a slight chirping sound, which is the best way I know how to explain it. It's now turned into a lot more and I'm trying to figure out what it is or where to even start. So any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm going to try to post a video I recorded while driving.

 

Drop your front driveshaft, lock the Transfercase, and see if the vibrations and chirping are gone. If so, you've found your culprit.

 

If it is making noise like that I would think you could tell just by looking if it was the culprit, no? Also, when mine went bad it was accompanied by the telltale heavy vibration on accel.

I might also take a look at the cv's, as it has been my experience that squeaking from them very immediately precedes a career ending injury, as it were.

 

Ok here's a link to the vid: 96 Land Rover Discovery transfer case noise: http://youtu.be/3Okv6GXXDpo

 

Wow. If that sounds half as bad in person as it does on that video then I might stop driving it until I figured out what it was.

Hard to diagnose by sound, need more info for sure. Whatever it is it sure sounds like metal on metal to me. Input or output bearing on the transfer case? Dunno man, you need to crawl under there and get a better idea of what's going on....

 

As far as info the only info I can give is that it does it under acceleration, gets worse at sustained speeds, and goes away when you decelerate. I have quit driving it and started driving our family van , which pains me badly because for one it's a full size van with a v6 and also I just hate vans. That's for a different discussion though. Maybe that info will help. I haven't had time to crawl underneath due to other priorities, but next week I've got to get under there and see. Hopefully it'll be a fairly simple find and not take to big of a chunk out of my wallet.

 

Fish_EH gave good info in his post - if the vibes are worse under accel then it could be driveshaft related. If it's making that much noise and it is a ujoint gone bad you'll be able to tell just by looking - grab the shaft and check for play. If the noise is coming from near the transfer case I would check the forward joint on the rear shaft first.

 

Ok so my dad has a lot of experience in this area but unfortunately is out of town so I didn't have him to brainstorm with. I had him look at the video when he was where he had internet and he's thinking it might be a frozen carrier bearing. So tomorrow is my first day off for the week so I guess I'm going to start off looking there. I'm a firm believer in start small work big. If the carrier bearing seems ok I'll try to isolate it by pulling the front propeller shaft and see if it goes away. If it does well then shaft's already out so I'll start from one end down to the other. If it doesn't stop I I'll start by checking the t-case back. That's my thoughts and plan anyway if anyone has some better thought or plan hit me with it I've got to get this fixed as my kids start school next week and I have to take them to school.

 

Finally watched the video. Eek, that doesn't sound good. I would check everything in your driveline, from front pinion all the way back to rear pinion(of the differentials).
Do you know the history of this truck? When's the last time the differential and transfercase oils were changed?

 

I've had the truck for about 2 years now. Last year around this time I drained the diffs and t-case and refilled them. I also had to replace the roto coupler at the same time. As far as driveline history that's about all I know.