Monday, March 23, 2009

Rear Differential Drain/Refill

Let's get current!

The first thing I did to my truck after replacing the shifter seat/bushing/boot was drain the nasty stuff that was in my rear differential. This had to be just as easy as doing an oil change (which is the one thing I have done on every vehicle I've ever owned). Well, it was - and it wasn't.

First of all, I couldn't get the frickin drain plug out. I know - WTF, right? I couldn't find a 24mm 6-pt socket. All I had was a 24mm 12-pt socket and that's all I could find at Sears, Kragen, Napa, etc. I sprayed the drain plug with PB Blaster for 2 days prior to attempting to get it off just in case it hadn't been removed in years (which is what I expected). It was stuck stuck stuck. I almost stripped it trying to get it off.

I finally got the plug out and noticed that the oil inside of my rear diff looked like tar. It was oozing out slowly and was black as pitch. I think tar might actually smell better than that crap. I filled it up with some MT-90 knowing that I was going to have to run her for a while and drain/fill again soon to clean out that differential. Even though that may not have been the cheapest oil to use only temporarily, I figured it might do the best job cleaning out the crud.

I replaced the drain and fill plugs with a couple of the low profile magnetic plugs I picked up from Marlin Crawler. The 10mm allen type (?) plug is awesome. It's not going to strip anytime soon and fits my tool super snug.

1 comment:

Winchester said...

Here I am, posting a comment to my own blog. I didn't want to update this post and have the date change, so here I go:

MT-90 is NOT a good oil to run in your differentials. A good oil to run is the heavy duty stuff. I now use 85W-140 oil. I'll move to a synthetic when I've hit about 2000 miles on the new gears. Please know that MT-90 is not your friend when it comes to your diffs. Good in the tranny and t-case - not in the diffs.