Whirring noise while driving

[bmidd]

2020 with ~70k miles. Audible whirring noise when applying gas while in motion, went away when you let off the gas. Dropped it off today and they said rear diff. Transfer case also has a bad leak, so they'll have to tear into that. After they did the valve body replacement they neglected to fill the trans to the proper level, we didn't discover that until about 15k miles after that repair. Started shifting weird and having shift flare on the 2-3 and 3-4 shifts primarily. Took it to a local friends shop and discovered it was almost 2 quarts low. They'll be replacing the diff and will let us know about the transfer case and will be flushing the trans fluid, we'll see if they can manage to get the it filled properly.

 

[hbalek]

2020 with ~70k miles. Audible whirring noise when applying gas while in motion, went away when you let off the gas. Dropped it off today and they said rear diff. Transfer case also has a bad leak, so they'll have to tear into that. After they did the valve body replacement they neglected to fill the trans to the proper level, we didn't discover that until about 15k miles after that repair. Started shifting weird and having shift flare on the 2-3 and 3-4 shifts primarily. Took it to a local friends shop and discovered it was almost 2 quarts low. They'll be replacing the diff and will let us know about the transfer case and will be flushing the trans fluid, we'll see if they can manage to get the it filled properly.

I'm hoping mine will stay out of the shop for a while! I had my front axle disconnect repair, rear differential replaced twice and transfer case twice and all before 55K miles! I'm not ready for a new car just yet so I'm hoping to hold out another year or so with the remaining 2 years of ESP bumper to bumper warranty.

 

[yettihead]

I though I was going crazy as on my ST at higher speeds around 70 mph I was hearing something similar. When pushing on the gas no matter how little I hear a strange noise, if I let off the gas pedal the noise goes away. I guess it is time to take it in as I have a 80k powertrain warranty.

 

[bmidd]

I ignored it for a long time and was of the wait till it breaks mindset, but it started getting louder. It was doing it for the last 90 days.

 

[enphor]

I've been noticing many rear diff issues for these vehicles. It seems like a pretty beefy unit but looks can be deceiving I guess. Could be a design, quality, or maintenance issue.

With the myriad of rear diff stabilization products on the market, I believe that points to a major design issue where Ford decided to keep things soft and cushy similar to the non-ST models in order to maintain the consistency of ride feel across the Explorer line... or they were just being cheap and not wanting to make unique parts for the ST to keep it cheap/easy for them (or both).

The diff clearly moves around too much even with stock power on the ST which probably causes stress on the unit resulting in premature wear especially around the input section causing eventual bearing damage that later transmits to further damage inside the unit.

Needless to say the power the stock and especially modded ST puts out necessitates earlier fluid service intervals on the drivetrain. Diffs, transfer unit, transmission.

These are things that we can control. If there is a quality issue or deeper design issue in play , only Ford can fix that. It could also be on the first few years of the ST and Ford stealth fixed the issues in later MY's.

The same could be said for the craptastic plastic oil and trans pans on the vehicle. They should have both been aluminum and have a few more quarts capacity for both. Instead they installed shallow cheap plastic junk.