Solved: Bell sound shifting from reverse to drive

2005 v6 auto. 203k miles pretty heavily modified. I've never had transmission issues. Today I started hearing this bell sound when shifting from reverse to drive. You'll hear it very loud and clear if you wath the 5 second YT video linked. I bet you will listen more than once haha.

https://youtu.be/lOL6xCiZp90

The sound resonates through the driveshaft as soon as the transmission shifts into drive. Any thoughts are appreciated. It is a one piece Tom Woods driveshaft that I installed almost 2 years ago. I greased the ujoints at 200k miles. My first guess is ujoints so I will grease them again. It does look like there is some fluid seeping out of the trans so I will check that.

The truck has been in the snow since November and I just came down to Denver for the weekend. To really dig in I need to remove the skids and I'm set to drive back to Crested Butte tomorrow so I'm really hoping I'm good for the 5 hour drive back before having to deal with this. So first step I'll grease the ujoints and maybe unload the pressure and give it a good shake to see if I feel anything loose. Outside of that I may drain and fill the transmission which I last did at 158k miles back in 2020.



THANKS IN ADVANCE!

 

Greasing the ujoints did it - a lot of very black grease came out.

 

Thanks for coming back to post an update. And I literally was chasing this and greased up the joints on Friday, and took the same thing away haha

 

I was having similar issues with the sound and sudden and severe change in vibrations. Greasing did not fix mine. Turns out there are giant chunks of metal missing. To be honest I had the bell sound for awhile before the vibrations started.

Now driving around in 4hi with no driveshaft until I can get this to a local shop to see if they can fix it or if I’m starting over. Had this less than two years - I may go back to a two piece and carrier bearing (with drop) if it isn’t salvageable.

 

The ding is back. I'm also getting more vibrations than normal. I may remove the DS and drive 2wd for a day and see if the vibrations are gone to rule that in/out and inspect the DS in more detail, but it looks like it's in good shape.

 

I have no idea what your issue is but my 84 c10 ls swap makes the exact same sound sometimes hahaha mine has something to do with starting the truck though.

 

Great looking truck! haha - yeah that bell is almost comedic at this point, but I definitely don't want that DS to leave the party while i'm driving. If I have the car in neutral or drive without my foot on the brakes the bell doesn't ring. it's definitely the rotation of the DS with the resistance of the brakes that causes the ding.

 

It's probably the slip joint.

Buy a tube of the blue Motorcraft PTFE grease, take it apart, and grease it up!

 

good idea - I will do that this week or weekend and report back. I added a question in this related thread https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/tom-woods-driveshaft-slip-yoke-greasing.766334/

 

I think I found it? Slip joint seems good. I dissected that today along with the rear ujoint. everything was tight. grease was abound. I think it's good. Very solid. No play at all. I took another look at the front and think I found my issue with the ujoint nearest the tcase -- https://youtu.be/4aIcLXZrscg

I hope some of you on here will confirm, but there should NOT be any play while rotating the DS with the flange side fixed ... correct? I didn't remove the front yet because my skids are on and it's a pain. If there shouldn't be any movement my next step is to replace that front ujoint and go from there, but my guess it's recommended to replace the ujoints all at once. Thanks again!

 

resolved -- looks like my issue was similar to @scmedic85 -- one of the the ujoint caps / seal was crushed. It was a bi$%h to get out and you can see the rust in the inside.








... ahh ... better ... Lesson learned to do a much more thorough inspection each 15k when I remove the skids for the gear changes. it now drives like a 20 year old truck in relatively good health haha.

 

Glad you got it fixed, I was going suggest if greasing the u-joints solved the noise even for awhile you have your smoking gun.