im haveing a small what looks like oil or grease leak coming from my axel housing,, could it be just a loose bolt?? any advice?

 

where specifically on the housing, in the center near the differential?

 

yea its like in the bottom center

 

ah okay


could be a loose drain or fill plug, or a clogged breather, but at worst, it's probably just the 3rd member to diff housing gasket

had the same thing happen to mine






it's fairly common

resealing it can be an entire afternoon's job though. step one would be to drain the diff fluid. then you have to slide the axles out in order to remove the 3rd member from the housing to replace the seal, and in order to do that, you have to undo the brake lines at the wheel cylinders (which means you have to bleed the system once you put everything back together), disconnect the parking brake cable (which involves digging into the brake shoe setup), and then remove the 4 bolts that hold the backing plate to the axle housing, and the axle/backing plate/wheel bearing assembly will slide right out. then move to your 3rd member, unbolt the driveshaft flange, then remove the bolts around the differential, and get read to hoist about 60lbs while laying on your back, lol

then just scrape the old gasket material stuff, apply a new one along with some RTV (a lot of poeple will tell you to just use RTV; my argument to that is, if you're only suppose to use RTV to seal it, then WHY is a gasket offered?), and just put everything back together starting with the 3rd member, then the axles, and the brakes, and refill the diff fluid, and you're on your way