Need help - cap in rear diff

[hskb]

My local shop can't open the rear differential bolt when i asked them to change the fluid, so today i tried to do it myself.
I heated it up a little, and used a break bar to open it. everything was ok until:

I accidentally dropped the blue cap of the Mobil 1 oil bottle INTO the rear diff.
I tried to use a vacuum to such / blow it out but no help.

is there a way to take it out other than opening the rear diff.
do you think it will cause damage to the diff if it's there?
thanks

 

[badlander]

Did you try draining the oil again? Maybe it will come out the drain hole with the oil. Seems like you could flush it out somehow.....
Maybe just keep putting oil in and letting it drain out at the same time until it comes out.
Good luck.

 

[dazerb]

Last time I did the diff juice on the rear pumpkin, I found some funny bits of the old axle seal rolling around in there - spring and plastic. Didn't see any damage, but its not ideal. That blue cap ought to ground into a nice paste and come out on the next change, LOL.

 

[hskb]

I did try to flush out with more oil but no help. Looked at a bunch of videos to see how the diff is constructed.

I think that small plastic cap won't cause the gears misaligned

 

[JBerger]

pop a cheap boroscope in there and use a spring grabber to find it and pull it out. It will be like high tech fishing and you will help your neighbors kids learn some new and productive strings of explicatives.

 

[Super77]

+1 on borescope to help locate it. Multiple flushes may help move it around. You can recycle the same fluid.

If you have another blue cap, drop it into a cup of diff fluid to determine whether it sinks or floats. Sinks = probably better, it will stay under the moving bits and may migrate its way closer to the drain.

I’m guessing the ring gear would shred it pretty quick if it got caught up.

 

[RapidRob]

I also think it will just get chewed up. But I'd try to get it out for a while.

 

[ndg]

I blew a length of clear pipe into my freshly rebuilt and reinstalled diff when refiling it with a syringe. I managed to extract it with a borescope thought he fill port and various picks/bent bits of wire to get it to the drain then forceps to grab it and pull it out. Would have been completely impossible without the borescope.

As said - it should just chewed by the gear, but it's got to be worth a coulple of hours of hassle to try and recover it. I was ready to pull the driveshafts and diff if I couldn't retrieve it.

 

[iwashmycar]

Maybe with the rear jacked up, spin the wheel(s) and see if it gets moved down.

 

[Super77]

Compressed air into the fill port (empty diff) to blow the cap around until it’s retrievable?

 

[Vthelexus]

I'd tape a smaller diameter tube to the shop vac's hose and try to suck it out. The more interesting question is how in the world did that happen, lol?