Lost my rear differential drain plug and made it home! (1 Viewer)

[surfishjoe]

Holy F**k, left camp Sunday morning and drove to Hershey Park. Parked the Taco all day and left the park around 9:30pm. Punched it home 2 hours 40 minutes hard doing 75-80 the whole ride- truck ran and felt great! Got home around midnight dead tired parked the Taco in the driveway and me and JJ went to bed. Wife goes running early next AM and wakes me up “ah your trucks leaking something”. Oh sh*t not good! Go check it out see a small puddle of gear oil underneath the rear dif. Thinking I cracked the housing or something I begin cleaning the dif to see where it’s leaking from. It’s a slow drip from the drain plug. Drain plug is impacted with mud so I grab a pick and start cleaning it out. Suddenly gear oil goes from a drip to a stream WTF! I continue to clean around the plug but suddenly the whole dif pukes itself out in the driveway! There was no drain plug in! Today I got a new drain plug and filled it with fresh Lucas non synthetic 85w 140 and drove it around with no noises and it felt smooth so I think I’m ok! Talk about lucky! Thank you Toyota Gods!

 

[brian]

buddy a first gen granada 30 years ago, wanted to kill the rear before replacing it.
so we drove it out and back to pittsburg from lebanon with no gear oil in the rear....no ill effects

 

[shmukster]

Wow lucky guy! I've seen drain plugs disappear on the trail before but never heard of driving home without it!

 

[BruceFZJ80]

Glad you made it home ok Joe, I guess sometimes mud is good . How'd you guys like Hershey park?

 

[caz]

Yikes! Now that is a good wheeling story!

 

[Crusha]

 

[PAToyota]

I'd say that some higher power was smiling down on you to take the plug AND stuff the opening with mud at basically the same time so you didn't lose too much fluid!

 

[Pacer]

I'd say that some higher power was smiling down on you to take the plug AND stuff the opening with mud at basically the same time so you didn't lose too much fluid!

Jah