> Well, I'm only at 5000 miles. A far cry from 30k. Could this still be
an
> issue?

Little over 30000 km on my 2002 CR-V EX. Drove it in mud, sand, snow,
extremely cold and hot wather and so far, so good.
No noise what so ever from the drive train.
BTW, I was really impressed. For a part time AWD, it did very good in lot of
places I wouldn't even try to pass through with a car.