For yall with big(ger) tires.

[Skandocious]

No gear noise? That isn't what you said before.

"Well as soon as I had to pull my foot off of the accelerator (to let the truck coast down a hill), I heard grinding/humming noise coming from somewhere in the front end. It stays for a second or two then it goes away. But as soon as I step on the accelerator it comes back for 1-2 seconds and goes away again. Then repeats if I take my foot back off --- etc etc."

"I'm thinking either a bad u-joint somewhere or possible (ahhhh!!!) the guy that did my gears recently setup the front pinion wrong. "

Obviously, I can't speak for the shop you went to, but they definetly didn't do much trial and error with the wear pattern and back lash. The old shims probably got them close enough to where they needed to be and they let it go that way. They must have planned on doing that from the get go and that explains their same-day-turn-around prediction going into the project. Where you live there is probably enough low balling competition offering cheap work and thus everone must offer lower prices to be competitive and stay in business - thats just the market where you live (speculation of course).

Well I never confirmed if the noise was actually in my gears, it could very well have been a u-joint. I've yet to use 4wd since I replaced the joints on my front driveshaft and the axle joints are still original too, so we'll see what happens with that.

As for the shop doing a half-assed job, I highly doubt it. They're one of the most highly acclaimed shops in Sac for doing the jobs for all the crazy Jeepers and off-roaders. They've got quite a good reputation to uphold to b doing bum gear swaps.