Today Is National Differential Fluid Day!

[gakali]

Well not really.

But I did finally get around to checking my front diff fluid. It's condition and level were making me paranoid. It was JJ's post about "a pile of goo for fluid" or something like that that made me wonder.

I really should have checked/replaced it when I had the tranny out for the chains. Crazy that there is no drain plug for it

Once the pendulum mount was out I could easily remove the fill plug with an extension from behind the frame. At 240,000 km the level was full, clean and smelled like gear lube. I chose not to replace it as I would need to devise some sort of way to suck it out through the hole. I highly doubt I could even get out half of it this way as space is limited. Forget about using the road speed sensor hole it wouldn't work on this tranny as far as I can tell. I'll just go with the "lifetime fill" thing for now.

At least now the paranoid visions of an oil starved diff. can be put to rest
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Why do it? Because you can.

1999 Eurovan
2003 A4 Avant 1.8T Quattro
1992 W201 190e 2.3 Mercedes
2006 W220 S600 V12 Twin Turbo 5.5 Mercedes

[jjvincent]

We changed diff fluid in Audi 5000's for years because they needed it. We had a small copper pipe bent to wedge down into the diff and then sucked it out.

[JMB3]

I looked at mine today because I was under there for some other stuff. At 130,000 miles it was full and looked OK. I was able to suck out only about .5 liter with a MityVac. At least I was able to clean the magnet. Write-up in the wiki https://vweurovan.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Drive_or_Differential