Transmission output shaft bearing is toast

[lbridges]

Thought I'd drop a note & let folks know the output shaft bearing on my 2002 Spyder self destructed....at 53K miles.

For general symptoms, I started noticing a sound that I attributed to a rattling heat shield, that gradually worked it's way up to something sounding like a wrench vibrating against a steel wheel (best way I could describe it), then finally escalated to some serious whining and generally bad noises just before giving up the ghost.

Closing thoughts...if you hear anything like I mentioned above, see if it mostly goes away coasting in neutral, but increases in volume when accelerating/decelerating. The first hint of sound seemed to be centered around an RPM range of 2K, but of course YMMV due to variances between cars. Several others on SC have reported this to be a problem area - I wouldn't call it an epidemic, but it's not a cheap or easy fix, so... forewarned is forearmed.

edit: getting some good help from Toyota Customer service...and I might add that the price of a LSD tranny is only like 2 bucks more than the open version when buying new.