My All-trac -90 has just passed 250000km. When it's cold (< -10 C) I have a annoying higt frequent sound from "somewhere" at 67-72 km/h. Not less, not more. It disappears after 20-30 minutes when evertyhing is warm. It's not from the wheel hub. The drive shafts are also in bad shape and should be replaced but first of all I wan't to get rid of this sound.
Well. Have talked to a Toyota mechanic when I bought this car and he said: "nice car but check the bearings in the gearbox, we have changed several".
He didn't know exactly what bearings or how many hours of (hard) work you'll have to spend under the hood if you are a normal do-it-yourself guy with your own garage. But I assume it's a lot.
One guy I found on another forum had about the same problem and he just swapped transmission to solve his problem.
But during this operation he found out that you (probably) can change this bearings - at least the right one - without removing and splitting the box.
When the shafts were removed, there was some kind of sleeve behind it that could be removed from the outside and the bearing that was bad was sitting on this sleeve. Looked like a standard bearing he said.
Now: what's your opinion of this operation? Have anyone tried and can you do it as easy as described? And is it a std bearing (Toyota is asking $130 just for the bearing)

i know factory throwout bearings on the clutch assembly tend to make alot of noise, especially from toyota. after that, it WILL gernade on you! ask me how i know. when mine went out, it took the input shaft to my trans with it. clutch, pressure plate and flywheel were fine, but the throwout bearing was trashed.

Someone said that replacement of those bearings (better quality/model?) was mandatory upon warranty since a service bullentin from Toyota said so.
Don't know if it's true but it must be many others here (with manual gearbox) having or have had about the same problem?

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but, my old wagon did make this noise from 40-60km/h in the cold.

The new wagon seems to make this sound from 70-90km/h. =(

Mine used to make this sound around 40-60 km.  Then I changed the differential fluid, ran some Auto-Rx in it and drained it again. the noise went away.

Hmmmm that might be an option for me. From what I understand the noise is coming from the Clutch Throw-Out Bearing, and my clutch is going to need changing within a year or two I think... I'll probably just get a higher quality bearing at that time, but I do notice that the sound is less prominent now that I'm running some Redline 75w90 in the differential.