The official "How many miles on this part?" or "Is this normal wear?" thread....
 

The topic of today is a rear differential magnetic drain bolt.

Normal? Or way overdue for a fluid change?

http://68.81.104.88:3390/drainbolt.jpg

Mine look the same all the time, so I guess it's quit normal.

Kinda reminds me of something............:D

Thats normal. MOst of that is from the initial break in of your truck diff, way back when. Most people dont clean the plug when they change fluids. However, I change all my diffs every ~30k or so. The $10 for the fluid is worth its weight in gold for peace of mind.

I agree that is very normal. Whats not normal is when you see chunks of metal come out of the drain hole!

How many miles on this?

http://68.81.104.88:3390/plugs.jpg

http://68.81.104.88:3390/wtf.jpg :laugh:

Pretty worn sparks? :dunno:

4RUNR,

my rear diff drain plug did have *some* shaving, but not that big silver glob. I've seen worse. So I am saying that its normal.

My spark plugs looked the same as yours too. Almost identical. I have this chart that shows all the different types of spark plug wear---yours is normal.

Bob

Toyoda was the name of the family/guy that started Toyota. The reason the name was changed is it took like 13 strokes to make the name Toyoda in Japanese. This was unlucky so they changed it to Toyota that only took 12 strokes. This is on the Toyota site somewhere.

Bob_98SR5, would you say they are approaching their 20k-30k miles birthday? I've never held a brand new twin electrode so don't know just how much wore off those, though everything looks pretty rounded off.

It was crystal clear and actually tasted like cranberries :laugh: Though is slightly darker than fresh fluid when compared side by side.

Think its worth to flush all 15+ quarts if the old one is that clean?

http://68.81.104.88:3390/atf.jpg

Also the manual says drain and refill capacity for 4WD is "up to 2.1 quarts". When I took the plug out, close to 5 quarts came out! 3040EL is the transmission model.