xfirechief

Want to change the rear axle lube on our '04 RX. It has a drain plug & fill one also. Problem is that there is not much room to get the qt. of synthetic GL in. If I could I would put a hose on the end of the plastic qt. bottle & sqeeze it in but there does not seem to be room to get the bottle up there.

ANY IDEAS HOW ???

TunedRX300

Go to Autozone to buy a suction gun for <$10, draw GL5 fluid in, insert the hose into the fill hole, and pump it out.

xfirechief

Got the suction gun & got extra hose too, about 2 ft.
Time to go to work & open the drain up. Any idea as to what size the drain pluf is??

Book states it holds 1 qt. Think I'll do the transfer case too.

TunedRX300

RX300 front differential is 15/16 or 24mm, rear is 10mm hex, not sure about RX330.

Lexmex

The long hose method was the only way I could do the rear differential on my RX300.

The transfer case needs the fluid slightly more than the rear, but do both.

xfirechief

Took about 1/2 hr. to drain, flush out & refill. Boy was the old lube dirty & the plug was full of black gunk.

Next stop is the front transfer case. Then a compplete flush of the auto tranny.
Putting Amsoil synthetics in everything.

PS - the rear plugs came out with a 3/8" allen wrench.

Lexmex

That is how my drain plug was on the rear. The transfer case won´t have much gunk, but boy will it ever smell. Good on the Amsoil...cannot get it down here, but used Royal Purple instead.

RX330inFL

Curious to know how many miles are on your '04? Mine is an '04 as well with 32K miles. Wondering if this was a servicing I had forgotten about or if yours just has many more miles. Was not thinking it was needed until 60K. Though, I can see where doing it early would be good preventative maintenance if you plan on holding many years.

xfirechief

We have 50K on it. I should have changed the gear lubes sooner but thought it was a bigger job then it was. I like to do things like this myself whenever possible. Hard to get someone to put in my Amsoil anyways as it would be like going to a restaurant with my own steak & asking them to make it.

For the price of a few qts. of synthetic gear lube & as dirty as the old stuff was it was time, past time as far as I am concerned.

Next job will be flushing the old tranny fluid out and putting in 10 qts. of new synthetic. I will take that to a small garage near here as they have the transmission flusher made for this job.

TunedRX300

Oil Change Interval depends on usage. For RX300, it is heavily front biased, the gear oil in front differential take more beating than the rear ones. Here is a used oil analysis on a rear wheel drive Toyota Tundra's rear differential. The owner goes off road a lot. 20K the Mobil 1 75w90, which is synthetic oil, needed to be changed.
http://www.ezdries.net/Vidpics/temp/...ff%20share.pdf
I feel comfortable to change the rear differential on my AWD RX300 every 60K, front one around 30K to 45K.

RX330inFL

I checked the PDF copy of the maintenance schedule I keep on my Palm and it shows 60K for the differential oil replacement. No reference prior that I could find. My '04 RX330 is FWD, though as a long time Subaru owner I understand the advantages of 4WD and AWD. Seeing the problems some where having with the RX300 on transmissions and such I may need to get more proactive on these types of servicings if I wish to hold my RX for a long time.

Would any care to recommend a good service manual for the '04 RX? Thanks. The Amsoil site shows the proper types and quantities, but a full manual with pictures for the take aparts would be nice for the mechanically challenged.

Also, as part of the diff oil change, would it not help to purchase some less expensive diff oil in addition to run through. Perhaps 1/2 qt as a flush?

TunedRX300

Like I said, the RX300 is heavily front biased and I have a modified intake and light weight crank pulley, which translates more power and torque delivered to the axel. Base on the gear oil study of Mobil 1 on the Thundra and my usage, I would do better to change gear oil at ~40K than blindly following a the schedule, which is a just a guideline.
Mobil 1 75w90 cost ~$8 per quart, Amsoil is about the same. I would not use anything other than synthetic beause its higher flash point and better resistance to oxidation.

1Lieutenant

My RX350 manual states the auto transmission requires a special type of fluid, not Dexron 2 or 3. I did not realize Amsoil made an auto trans fluid compatible with Toyota transmission. Do you have a part number.

Steve

Tammy

The RX 350 uses Toyota standard "WS" ( world standard), replaced by the dealer only. This is the next level of ATF past the Type IV. Type IV replaced Dexron III in the Toyota electronic controlled transmission.

The WS transmissions do not have a dipstick. The fluid is changed from the underside, as like a manual transmission with separate drain and fill plugs.

RX330inFL

Tammy is quite right here. While you can replace the transfer case oil using an Amsoil Synthetic Gear Lube product, there is no ATF synthetic available for the RX350. All the references on this thread were for those of us with 300's and 330's.

Supposedly, the life span on the new WS ATF is 100K miles. By the time you get close to needing a change it will be more readily available for those who want to do it themselves.