Dif and Tcase fluid change

[marin8703]

Originally Posted by f5fstop

Front drive pinion shaft seal is leaking and apparently leaking quite a bit.
As for driving, depends on how much has leaked out. You could pull the sight/fill plug and add some fluid, but the synthetic fluid is very expensive. Or using a coat hanger, pipe cleaner, etc. stick it in the hole and see how low the level is.

If it appears to leak only when rotating, that tells me the seal is either bad at the top, or if bad at the bottom, the level has dropped pretty low.

f5, do you know what the fix is for that, will the whole diff be switched out or just the seal? Which ever it is how long do you think the work would be?

thanks

[f5fstop]

Seal replace is about 2 hours, so figure it is an all-day drop off for the H3 at the dealer. They will replace the seal not the diff, unless it is something other than a bad seal. Seals that leak early in the components life, are usually damaged upon installation of the seal into the component during component assembly; or damaged when another component is installed (in this case, the shaft is installed inside the diff).
In this case, if the pinion shaft is slightly crooked when installed into the diff, it could slightly cut the ID of the seal, that over a short time will cause a leak.

(I guess I could add, it could be something else like a cracked diff in the shaft area, but that is extremely rare. It could also be porosity of the case, which also is very rare, so I would bet it is the seal, but not being there....)

[marin8703]

Thanks f5, , on my way to drop it off rite now.