Metal screech after muddy water crossing

[cabnfvr]

Saturday we rode through a 10' wide x 20' long x 10" deep muddy water crossing. No way around and I figured no problem. Immediately after exiting we had a loud metal to metal screech. Screech, screech, screech. 7 times in 20 feet meant drive line and ruled out rocks on the brakes. I shifted from 2H to 4H to N to 4L, No change so I was hopeful it was in the drive line and not the transfer case. I called the dealer when we got out to cell service (We were just on local forest roads but still we had no coverage) but they were closing up for the day. We discussed the screech and thought it must be a heat shield or something since it was related to the muddy water crossing. We decided to drive it home since that was mostly on low speed forest roads. We went though more water to see if the noise changed. Sometimes it did. Weird.

Saturday evening I crawled all under the Jeep with a flashlight. Everything looked tight. (The welds look great, BTW.) Sunday I awoke with a plan. I blocked the front tire and jacked up the left rear, crawled under and used my foot to rotate the wheel. Eureka!

Grit from the muddy water (our soil has a lot of sand in it) had entered the rear driveshaft holes and was creating the screech. I flushed it with WD40 (for the pressure, not because it was WD40) and a lot of dirty goop flushed out. Noise gone! The weird part is that the JK has no holes in that flange. What are the holes for? Dunno, but if you get a loud screech immediately after a muddy water crossing this is probably the issue..

Stuff happens, but in this case the issue turned out to be a non-issue. That's certainly OK with us. We LOVE this Jeep!

Holes in rear flange at pinion had dirt in there.

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[Jerkwater]

I want to thank you for this post. I just had this exact same thing happen, and this is giving me some peace of mind.

For me, I heard a constant, screeching sound for about a second or so while winching myself out of a high-centered situation in the mud. I was pretty concerned, but because it didn't re-occur again while leaving the mud flats or during the hour-plus drive home it didn't seem to warrant immediate attention. I looked underneath and didn't see anything awry either.

I will have to check/flush out those holes.