96 silverado grinding in rear?

i'm a decent weekend warrior mechanic, but this one has me baffeled.  when i got off the highway the other day, the rear started this low grade grinding.  it doesn't do it all the time, but when it does it is usually pulling out, or making slow turns then accelerating.  as soon as i let off the gas the noise stops.  if the rear is going out, can this be rebuilt at home, or should it be taken to a gagage?  any help would be greatly appreciated

Welcome to the forum!!! Have checked the fulid level in the diff.?

hey, sorry i'm gettin back to ya so late.  it never let me know that you commented me.  but to answer your question,  yes, it was a little low, so i topped it off, still no good, i think that i lost some bearings.

That is very possible, and that is what I would look at next.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a fairly common problem-differential oil level very low FROM THE FACTORY.Check out the following thread.
http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/showthread.php?t=207534&highlight=rear+differential+low

usually once they start to make noise it will never go away, the rear diff in my 92 i had was ran low, made a little noise even after refilling of course but it still lasted towing car trailers all over ohio for another 70k miles (230k total on the poor thing) till the engine was beyond worn out. if its not extremely loud run it for a while untill it gets worse.
if you understand backlash and pinion depth then you can fix it yourself, if not then have someone shim it up that knows what theyre doing if you replace the ring and pinion, or just find a used rear out of another truck and swap the whole thing to make it easy

Yeah, I would get it shimmed from someone who knows what they are doing.  The spacing on rear ends is a very tight tolerance.  It should not be that much and your fluid will get changed in the process.

hey guys, thanks for the input, i ended up taking it to a gm garage, and it turned out to be a c-clip on the output shaft of the transfer case, the noise was being transmitted throught the driveshaft