Thanks to the information available on this forum I was able to do the diff fluid And it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Recently I started to notice some chatter/shudder during acceleration from a stop and remember seeing a while back that replacing the diff fluid helped. I’m almost at 80k miles and it was definitely time.


I put the car up on jack stands to keep it level and gave me some working space under the car.





***Always make sure you can undo the fill plug before undoing the drain plug.***


I didn’t cut an Allen wrench down like some members have done. I bought a drill bit set that had an 8mm Allen bit. I used it with a wrench to get in to the tight space to undo the fill bolt. This is what worked for me. There are a lot of tool sets out there that would work better but I was able to make it work with this cheap set up.




I will say working with the limited space was a pain. There is a wire plug kind of in the way but once I moved the plug out of the way it really helped with having some more space to work with the wrench. Make sure to clean off the area so you can see the plug better and not risk getting some of the build up into the diff when the fill plug is out.







Once the fill plug is out you can start undoing the drain plug. Once the diff is drained I put the drain plug back in with some thread sealant.




After reading through some threads, I put in about 1.3 quarts of gear oil. My fill plug was in okay shape but next time I do this I will replace the plug as it is loosing its Allen shape.

The process was not as bad as I thought. The fluid in there was pretty nasty. I think I’ll do it in another 30-40k and not 80k.

 

Noticed in that pic that you either have CF side vents or painted them black? I painted that little chrome piece in the middle of it (gloss black), but haven't done the whole side vent (yet - Ha-ha). Have any pix you can share of how they look on your white car with the black wheels (same as me).

 

my wheels aren’t black but more like a gray. The vent is just wrapped black. These were already done on it before I bought the car.

 

I didn't mean to sidetrack (not a total hijack) this thread, but it looks good. I'm so tempted to do mine. The only chrome/silver/aluminum left on mine is the window surrounds, which I'll do when it's all put back together, and I might do the side power vents at the same time.

Back on track - great work on the rear diff and your tool selection. I did mine a few months ago, also completely thanks to this forum. The one thing that working on cars (and houses) has definitely done is ensure that my 9-year-old son will inherit a massive set of tools, some day. Nowadays, my challenge isn't having the right tools, but figuring out which of the right tools I already own is the "best" to use in a particular situation, because I have so many which could actually do the job. Not always necessarily a good thing.

 

I've got my Power Vents off. Decision time...

 

I can tell you I ran my car through a lot of car washes and the wrap on my vents have held up.

 

I've always been worried about them using razor blades near my paint, but with the parts off of the car, I'm not as worried.