hitthepin

Thanks Lex. Good tips to know.

carguy07

I used a generic windshield washer pump back in the day that worked great. I never see them at the parts stores anymore. Anyone know where to get one? They were like $5 and would pump right out of the bottle and fill the differential in less than a minute. I would just throw them away if they got too gummed up.

lexus114

sounds like a good idea carguy,the next best thing i saw was on e-bay,a pump ran by your electric drill.

Lexmex

If one of you is going to be near Bradenton, Florida, just south of Tampa, and has an AWD and is looking to do this, let me know as I might help you out in about a month or so, as I plan to leave Mexico early April.

hitthepin

So will you have to change your handle to "LexFlorida" now.

Lexmex

Or something like LexFlo.

6.0PSD

This pic is to test if the resizing works. If it goes through this pic shows the RX on front ramps, driveway pitches down toward street so about half way up on ramps makes truck level and helps with some extra room under there. Of course my King had to get in the pic.

6.0PSD

Left jar is front gear oil followed by rear gear oil in center jar and comparing it to standard gl5 new oil on right. I wonder if that oil has ever been changed in the 83k that the original owner owned it. It's pretty dark. Both Front and Rear fill and drain plugs were a b---h to come off. the drain on front I used a stubby 15/16 with a thin wall 12 point, banged wrench with a rock a few times and it came loose



BTW, what's in the jars is not all the oil that came out. I just wanted to get most in there to see how nice and clean it came out, ewwww. Bought cheap tomato sauce at Walmart so that I could use the jars, they were $1 each and sauce actually smelled pretty good, almost like ragu.

6.0PSD

Another shot of used oils at a closer view

Attachment 121537


Attachment 121538


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I think I finally figured out how to attach more than one pic per post. Hope it works

6.0PSD

Ok, above post with the extra attachments didn't work.

Closer shot of used oil F & R

6.0PSD

Front drain plug wasn't too bad, very little dust on it. This is the rear plug that looks pretty bad.



I didn't get a pic of the front plug as it was pretty clean.

6.0PSD

This is the last step in refilling the front gear. I had done the rear gear yesterday and did the same thing in the driveway with the ramps and car facing opposite of picture above.



Thanks to this thread that helped get the gears done right. I used cheap SuperTech Walmart gear oil as I plan to do the gears again by the end of fall 2008 and will probably use the cheap stuff again until next spring. Then I'll probably look into the synthetics.

My next project is to follow the sticky for the transmission oil draining directions.

I also have to find out if I could attach more than one pic per post.

Lexmex

Those are nice pictures. It usually quite common that the rear differential and transfer case fluids haven't been changed out before 100,000 miles if dealer maintained. I know because no such changeout was made when I did my 90K actually, an 82K. However, no harm done, as these fluids can go that long, though I generally recommend normally, at least once ever 30K miles min and max 50K miles for normal driving, though I do mine every year.

wing0

Hi all,

I'm at 64000km and plan on doing the transfer case/rear diff fluid change.
After reading all the pages, I'm starting to get a sense of some of the tools I might need to go out and buy(suction pump/gun)
Is 10mm Allen key ok for the 3/8 plug?

I was wondering if castrol syntec is good enough. I haven't found mobil1 up here in Toronto yet.

Also, How do you all tighten the plugs back to specification when a torque wrench can't really fit in some of the places?

Lexmex

Yes, it can work. I plan to use a suction pump gun next time I do this and then show some more pretty pictures as I have in this thread.

Castrol's synthetic gear fluid will also work fine. Keep in mind that gear fluid can last a pretty long time, in fact it's the fluid that lasts the longest of anything that goes into our RX300s. I haven't had any real issue with the Pennzoil Synthetic that I put in back in Mexico and have kept using here.

I have never used the torque wrench when doing this, but generally I have found you can't really tighten it much more than say (if we used a clock as an example), from the 1 to 2 o'clock position, or maybe 75% of that. They don't have as much play in tightening them as say the tranny plugs or the oil plug.