bbrk753 said:
or wheel bearings if they rolled your car around without the axle's inside when your tranny was out
And we have a winner! I may never know how it happened, but it turned out to be the wheel bearings. I picked up the car yesterday from Mazda Knoxville, and the drive home was heaven without that noise. They were so certain that my welded diff was the culprit, and they were wrong. Of course, this is discovered after eight months of dealing with the noise and a couple of week long stays at the dealer. The worst part though? I needlessly bought and installed a transmission!!! Arrrrgghh!
After swapping in the rebuilt tranny with the Quaife, the noise was still there. I called the dealer to tell them is wasn't the %##* welded diff and they were shocked and told me to bring it up to them. Once they saw my car now has a CAI, SMIC and exhaust they tried to weasel out of fixing it. It took lot of wrangling and some serious letter writing on my part, and pointing out that this problem started after they first worked on the tranny and therefore recent mods had nothing to do with this situation. I even had to drive up there for no other reason than to take their lead mechanic on a test drive to make sure he heard the noise. I told him that there's nothing left but wheel bearings and axles to check, and he agreed to start with the wheel bearings, which is what finally cured it.
Yeah, I could have just changed them myself rather than make three trips two hours away and go without my car for a week, but this became a matter of principle. Unfortunately, because I had them install a modified stock part (the welded diff) last Summer, the burden of proof was initially on me to show it wasn't the diff. Once I realized that the diff had nothing to do with the noise, it was on like Donkey Kong and THEY were going to fix it. Booya!
... glad it vindicated the welding mod too 
