Hi all,

I just bought a 2013 Lexus GS 350 AWD, and I love it. It only has 83k miles. My friend is a technician at Lexus. He inspected it today and noticed that the rear differential is seeping. He says that the seal has gone bad and that it takes 14 hours of labor to fix. There’s apparently a lot of labor that goes into this. I hope this is the last labor intensive issue that I have for a long time. Has anyone had issues with this?

 

Looking at threads around here for older generations, it seems people would suggest to first clean the area (with some degreaser or brake parts cleaner) to see how much it is leaking. If it's just slowly seeping, people just said to just fill the differential as needed. Either way until you figure out what to do, you should at least check/fill in the differential oil as you don't know how much is left after the leaking.

Another popular suggestion was just to replace the whole differential with a junkyard one. Seems those can be had pretty cheap.

 

The cheap fix, drain and fill the diff 1-2 times a year. It's easier to do than an oil change. First time I hear about that seal failing on a 4GS. I wonder what the previous owner did to cause this. After a drain/fill see how much comes out the next time and you can gauge how slow the leak is and adjust your drain/fill interval accordingly.

 

That seems unusual. Could be a rare manufacturing defect or perhaps the previous owner did some brake torqueing/hard launches to cause the seal to deform. 83k is way too low to get any leaks on these cars.

 

Unless it all leaks out in under 1,000 miles, I wouldn't spend much on it. Junk yards are full of cars with leaky diffs that never failed.

If it were mine, I'd change the fluid and see how much was in there. Then, I'd clean it up and refill with a good synthetic. Then, drive it a bit and check it. Differential fluid is very thick compared to engine oil and that may be several years worth of leak.