I did not remove the t- case mate. the bearing I was told were not bad so I just got my mech mate to replace the gears and boy o boy was it noisey. So had to remove the case again and I replaced all the bearing. So I reeally don't know if they were noisey from the start.

But once the new bearings were in its all good again. It still has a little noise but that's got to do the the gears. You will always get a littel noise when putting crawler gears in so I have been told. The s'3;s that I had in before they went bang were a little noisey.