Leaky Differential
 

Can anyone tell where the leak is coming from? I felt around and it seem the fill and drain plugs were fairly dry. The fill plug was a little wet (a crush washer maybe)... Either way, this is driving me nuts, I cleaned it last week when I did my tranny fluid. Now the drip is back again. It never leaked until I let one of the quick lube places change my oil...

http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...n/PICT0029.jpg
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...n/PICT0030.jpg
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...n/PICT0031.jpg
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...n/PICT0032.jpg

Lesson learned : never ever go to any quick lube place !

You can try to replace all washers and bolts to see if it will correct the issue.

Hard to see anything in the pics. Clean it up very thoroughly, and then check after a drive and maybe you can see where it starts. A puff of talc or cornstarch can help you see what's "wet". One thing you can do is use a torque wrench and make sure the plugs are tightened to specs -- maybe one is not fully tightened. The other thing you might try is putting a new crush washer on the filler plug and retightening. It's worth it to use new washers for tranny and diff. It's not like the engine oil where a slow drip doesn't threaten the engine. A bit more of a pain to replace the drain washer at this point, but fortunately that doesn't seem to be the source.

Yeah I learned my lesson.

I have a feeling it is the fill plug. They probably pulled it off to check the level, which doesn't really make sense to me...
My torque wrench or ratchet wouldn't fit in there, but you think a box end would?

Yeah it is just a leaky crush washer, I just need to figure out what size it is and get a new one.

Thanks for the help.

Update: the size is 18mm. :)

damn, same shit happend to me on my Explorer recently! I let some stupid quick lube place do the oil, next thing you know...differential leak.
I've been too pissed to try and fix it, car's collecting dust

I talked to the lube place and they said they only check them on older cars so... they were pretty sure they didn't touch it...

good luck with the explorer, it's just a pain in the a#@