Help - Rear Pop Sound When Taking Off (Not the Clunk)

As the title says, this is not the normal clunk, thunk, bump from the rear.

When I take off from a stop and accelerate quickly or am turning and take off quickly I hear and feel a quick pop from, what sounds like, behind the cab. I can really hear it when I lower the rear window.

If I take off slowly from a stop or turn, it doesn’t pop and it never pops while I’m already driving - only when I accelerate quickly from a stop.

Any ideas?

 

Have you done any maintenance on your rear diff? If you haven't, it's really easy to do and may be the source of your noise.

Check all the maintenance items like the carrier bearing and the joints on the drive shaft for wear.

What mileage do you have on the truck?

 

Make sure your drive shaft is lubed up too!

 

Embarrassing as this is, need to research how to do this. It’s a 2WD and this is the one area I’ve never messed with.

It’s a 2WD with 148K miles. I serviced the rear diff 2-3K miles ago and the fluid was actually pretty clean.

I’m not real familiar with how much play is normal in the driveshaft, it moves if I push or pull on it real hard, but otherwise it feels pretty solid, it’s not “loose”.

From what I’ve read there’s no zerks on the 2WD?