How to Check Your Car's Differential Gear Oil

Video Transcript

"I'm Dave Erb from Dave's Ultimate Automotive in Austin, Texas, and we're going to be talking about how to check your differential gear oil. First of all let's talk about what a differential is. A differential is basically a set of gears inside this housing, that turn the spinning motion of your drive shaft into the driving of the axles to the wheel. You have a ring, a ring gear and a pinion gear. Several bearings and other things, sometimes clutches for positraction those kind of things that's on here that need to stay lubricated. So you want to make sure that you're full of fluid. The reason you want to check the fluid is sometimes it get, can get low if you see the, the cover back here leaking or some wetness here. Sometimes seals inside the wheels can leak and all that fluid comes from the same place. It's a fluid that you want to change periodically. Some people say every ninety thousand, depending on what you do with it. The longevity of it that may thirty or sixty thousand. Depends on, on the, on like I said, what you're going to do. So they're real simple to check. All you do is pull out this plug right here. This is drain, I'm sorry, this is the fill and check plug. There's not really a drain plug on the differential, you're going to have to pull the rear cover off to get the fluid out of it unless you have some way to suck it through this hole. So you pull the, the plug out, real simple. You want to dip your finger in and make sure there's fluid right here at the level of the, of the threads. So when you're filling it up, you just want it to spill right over. And if it's full it'll be right there at the top. And, which this one is, so the fluid looks good. Alright just put your fill plug, plug back in, tighten her down. And it's a progressive thread so you don't have to get it overly tight. And we're done."