notforyoujdm

Last post here just to update and say it was not a struggle to get a refund. I applied for one and it was approved a few days later without Paypal needing to jump in. Still no contact from them though but whatever.

They literally told me that my "special requests" of the quaife LSD would take less than a month total. I let them use whatever bearings they wanted for the $500 charge they said for them, although they did say they were OEM Nissan IIRC. If a company agrees to a timeline and says they can provide it then there is nothing wrong done on my end to expect that to be truthful. I am a little surprised someone would even hint at that but my expectations are fairly low anymore. Either way I am working on a refund but Whitehead doesn't respond and Paypal is going to take a while.

Wanting Japanese bearings is just the standard that I set for any car I buy generally. When my Honda needed a new wheel bearing I got a quality Koyo rather than just any bearing. I don't see wanting quality parts that will last as being picky at all but everyone is different. I personally like to do a job once and have it last rather than cheap out and have it fail, that is my reasoning. As far as the pinion bearings I cannot find the right ones, no. Nissan no longer sells those but they do sell the side seals. If I could buy from a quality bearing maker that knew the size I needed I would do that. I just do not know the size. RockAuto doesn't deliver to where I live so I avoid that website now. Something about them needing to do extra tax paperwork so they refuse to do business with my county. When I used to live where they delivered I also found the information on the website to be not always accurate. You order a part meant for your car and get the wrong one even though it clearly states it fits your model. Happened with some axles to me, listed for my exact model and everything. I understand this is due to the listing but again I'd rather order from a company I could speak to that would assure me the part is correct since I do not know the right size. If I could call Rock Auto it would be different but they are not that type of business or at least were not in the past. Thank you again though.

I appreciate it but I've already looked for the part for a while and I'm not really looking to do more of that. I'd be happy to pay someone for the part, like I said I was willing to do $500 just for the 4 bearings to Whitehead. I know I am getting screwed at that price as I can get the side bearings from Nissan for $66 each but I'll pay for someone else to throw it together and be responsible for making sure it is the right part the first time. The place that I found selling them before said there were like 4+ different options for the pinion bearing size in a short nosed r200 and that I had to measure to be 100%. It having 4+ different possible sizes makes very little sense to me for the same short nose r200 but I am just relaying what they told me and they had an interest in selling me the part. Plus they said they do not stock any Japan made bearings which is what I would prefer, they always last longer. I just want to pay someone to fix my car and it is frustrating that I need to disassemble the thing to find out what parts are needed to do that. I am paying to avoid doing this work myself, ya know? The LSD itself isn't actually the issue either. I could order a Quaife from Quaife themselves without any delay whatsoever and have it delivered directly to my home. I spoke to them and confirmed this. Their website states it is in stock as well and will let me purchase it right now. I am still not sure why Whitehead has a delay with their orders. As far as location as specific as I would want to get would be Colorado. I could drive to Denver several hours away if needed. I am sure there must be a good shop out there but I cannot find one that seemed to know what they were doing and would rebuild my diff. Lots would install it for me, just very few could rebuild it.

When one shop is the go-to place all else is really out the window. I don't have a shop within even ~3 hours of where I live that was willing to touch my car at first. All of them work on trucks only and were shocked when I said the diff must be out of the car to be worked on. They had never done it like that before and didn't know how to set lash(or whatever it is called) and everything else required without it being mounted. I am in a real bad spot because nobody local could do it, so I went online to look for the best. I just did not dig deep enough. I went through Paypal so I knew I would be covered. The other part of this is I did get everything in writing through emails but there is no contract of course. Not much a person can do if they ask the shop how long it might take and the shop just straight up lies to them. I assumed I was dealing with someone that was telling me the truth but it seems like they were not at first and possibly are not now, but I am not sure about the last part. Time will tell. Now I have no idea how I am going to get my car back up and running. I need to find somewhere somewhat close to me that can do this work. The ones that eventually said they would give it a try do not inspire much confidence as mentioned above they have never done work on a car diff and expect it to be mounted only. I don't want to buy a nice LSD and lots of parts only to have someone mess it up. I need to buy the LSD, a new ring and pinion, and who knows what else. That will be over 2k most likely all said and done just for those parts as I want to match the 4.36 I have in there right now. Oh and my other issue is Nissan doesn't seem to make the pinion bearings for this anymore and I don't know where to find them. I can find the side bearings but pinion are impossible... Whitehead offered to sell me 4 bearings(2 side and 2 pinion I believe) for $450 which is a lot but at least I'd have the right ones... I cannot find the damn things anywhere else. If I could that would be a step in the right direction. This is for a short nose r200 that goes to an s14 240sx. I had contacted some bearing makers but they said I would need to pull them from the diff and measure them, there was no other way for them to know what I needed and I just cannot do that at this time. These were even places that stated they did Nissans lol.

I created an account just for this post. I wish I saw this before I ordered myself... I would have never done it. My car has been up for 2 months now waiting on this, a short time compared to some others that got got in the same way. I contacted Whitehead Performance about getting a r200 differential. They stated build time would be 3-4 weeks and it would be shipped out at that point. I inquired about a Quaife LSD not knowing they were having issues sourcing them. They told me that was a great choice and they could help me with that. At no time did they say this would cause it to take longer or that they were struggling to get these in. I even specifically asked them if this would cause the timeline to be longer than the 3-4 weeks and they said no. They KNEW they were having issues but they wanted my money instead of telling me the truth. Funny thing is they were incredibly responsive the entire time right up until I paid. They would sometimes email me back same day to answer my questions. After I paid responses took much longer. Then I emailed them 20 days later about the status of the diff, no response. In the next 2 weeks or so I emailed a few times and finally got a response at the end. I was also calling nearly every day during that time and not getting any answer. Had a friend call a few times too, nothing. Cannot leave a message because their voicemail is full. I just wanted to speak to someone about my purchase and there was nobody there. When they did finally respond to me they stated they had everything ready to go except the Quaife unit. They said it would be a few weeks until that came in and then roughly a week to build the diff. I am at the end of that timeline now so honestly if I don't have an email in the next week or 2 about it being shipped I'm just going to refund it. It's so hard to find a place to do this work but I don't feel good giving Whitehead my money after the way they are handling this. Mostly that they didn't inform me about the wait for the Quaife initially or that they had issues sourcing them. You can also see their Google reviews the last 6 months have tanked because of, you guessed it, Quaife issues. One review even stated they purchased their own LSD from Quaife and got it in a few weeks. That makes me question if Quaife is really the issue here or not... It's entirely possible Whiteheads distributer is having issues getting the Quaife at the right price point or something but whatever the problem is it is wreaking havoc with their reputation imo. I will 100% post an update if I receive my diff or whatever happens though. At least I will do my best to remember.