[Bret Brinkmann]

I saw an EXTREMELY worn tappered bearing on the end cover side of the counter shaft once. The only concern the customer had was that the tranny popped out of reverse a lot and 5th gear was starting to get notchy. The counter shaft had about 1/4 in of end play as opposed to having bearing preload. Pretty scarey to me.... And that was a reman from Mitsu with only about 1K miles on it.

The center diff housing never touched any of the gears, but the gears were deffinately not meshing properly from that shaft flopping around. The only gear that needed to be replaced was reverse and that was only because the dogs where hammered.

Bearings usually make a whinning sound when they start to go out. Some times they can make a slight grinding sound as you are describing. Either way, a lot more wear has to occur before they get as bad as the one I mentioned above. If you drain your gear oil look for flakes of metal on the magnet and metal powder through out the fluid. Those are signs of bearing failure.

I do no have a clucking sound in my VR-4. I can get a popping sound from the rear due to my worn trailing arm bushing or the worn rubber in the rear third section of drive shaft, but that is what I get for going RWD and having too much fun. I also noticed that when I first had me RPS II clutch, I had to slightly adjust the way I used the clutch to prevent a slight cluck in the drive train. Not a hugh clutch, but noticable if you paid attention. My SPEC I does not have this problem.

AWD cars should have more backlash than a 2WD car but even an AWD car can develope excessive backlash. Takeing up backlash in other non-worn componants that are with in spec can help reduce the sound but the sound will still be there until the source of the problem is corrected. But first, lets make sure your bearings are good.

That phattlard guy also had a popped VCU. You can tell from the black ring on the VCU around the splined section that the sun gear goes into.