Ok gearheads...here's the deal

My brother has an 01 Anniv. Ed. 5-speed, and about 8 months ago he has the signature differential carrier bearing failure due to excessive preload from the factory and had it fixed under warranty (50K miles). Last month and 12,500 miles later (just out of warranty) the problem resurfaced and he was leaking gear oil out of the drivers side axle seal and the axle was slightly loose. Nissan played dumb and wouldn't do anything about it even though they knew it was their fault, so it became my problem as I'm the technical one in the family.

Pulled the trans, tore it down and found that the PASSENGER side bearing was the one with issues (the big drivers side bearing looked and felt fine) so at this point I was a little confused since the other side was the one that was loose and leaking. Regardless I replaced both bearings, measured for shims and ordered shims yesterday. So that's all good.

Finally...after all that garbage, heres my question:

When I removed the race for the worn out bearing I noticed that there was only damage to the race in one section and it was only about 3/4 of an inch of damage...the rest of the race seemed ok. Does anyone know if this is normal for excessive preload or if there is some other issue here that I'm missing (messed up axle, etc.)

Thanks in advance for anyone who can help me out.

 

Wow... I didnt know the 5th gen trannies had bearing issues???

 

mhadford owns a Canadian 2000 SE 5sp w/ VLSD and he had bearing problems too.

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/763858/2

 

Hmmm maybe there is a bad batch of 5th gen 5spd VLSD's.