Transmission whine and drive issue

morning all, need a little help with best guesses on a transmission issue, as I cant check it out properly until late this evening (could do with a best guess before that)....

vehicle details: 130 300tdi with r380 - '98 so late model. Up to now no trans noise or problems at all.


doing 70 on the motorway this morning, and there was a crunch/thud very momentary drive/power loss (for about a second), leading to a loud whine/high pitched grinding noise.


appears to be in all gears (though didnt have chance to try out low ratio), and its either worse on overrun, or just not drowned out by engine noise.


clutch engaged noise goes away. gear changes are fine.


any ideas?


I've got to try and nurse it the 40 miles home this evening - hopefully it'll make it back!

Go introduce yourself first, you'll get more helpful responses,

Then go post in the Defender section as this in the Engine only area

cheers Jonny, I'll pop up and introduce myself shortly - I wouldn't normally break standard forum procedure, but it's a bit of an emergency situation this morning and I'm at work/short on time.

I'll stick something in the general defender section too, but as there are some very specific differences in r380 and transfer box variances between 300tdi and td5 engined defenders I was hoping to get advice a bit more specific to 300tdi's first.

Not quite what I meant,

Some of the older (ie senile) get a little ****y when people dont say hi first,