So today I thought I would pop open the differential to do a visual check of the gears to make sure nothing was amiss with them since I heard the popping a couple weeks ago and do a fluid change while in there. Fortunately everything looks good with no nicks, breaks or pitting on any of the gears. The unfortunate part was when I went to clean up the inside of the differential cover I found a rather large patch of oxidation. This was concerning since water isn’t supposed to have access to this housing in the first place. So I went after it with some steel wool but it was too late, the cover is pitted over a good sized area and will likely continue to rust. So I took that in stride since I want to start saving up for a Strange S60 anyway and it should be more than adequate until then.
However, once I went to clean off the housing to install the new gasket there arose another problem. I don’t know what backyard redneck was working on this diff in the past but he loved him some gaskets and RTV. There was a minimum of 2 layers of the standard paper gasket that was slathered with so much RTV it had spooged all into the housing and occupied all the bolt holes. I proceeded to take a razor to the the gasket off, no go. I broke out a screwdriver to try scraping it off. This worked to a degree. If you call hammering the butt of the screwdriver with the palm of your other hand in order to get it under the gasket and to scrape marginal amounts off, working. So after about an hour of trying to get this done I had managed to clear maybe a 6 – 7 inch perimeter around the bottom of the housing. There was no way I was going to be able to get that done. Especially since with the stock exhaust still being installed and having a muffler all up in my business I was barely able to get my hands to the top of the diff to access the bolts, much less go all out with a screwdriver to get that god forsaken gasket off. And I didn’t have the time to hack out the exhaust or drop the rear end to get the job done properly. So instead I had to settle for a working car over a properly fixed one. I had to lay the new gasket on a half cleaned housing and hope for the best.
Unfortunately this means the seal is half assed and is constantly leaking gear oil at this point. So I have to keep an eye on it to make sure I don’t burn up the gears until I have the time to either drop the rear or hack off the end of the exhaust for more working room. Probably at least a week if not more.
