How to clean out differential
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 933
Likes: 0
From: St. Paul MN
How to clean out differential
I purchased a Z06 differential off of ebay and the place I bought it from did a pretty poor job packaging the rearend. The rearend was packaged with shipping peanuts and it looks as if a few peanuts fell into the case. Any recommendations for cleaning this out? It looks as though there isn't much I could get to if I removed the inspection cover. My initial thoughts are:
1)Try to vacuum them out with a shop vac...not sure if I would have too much luck with that.
2)Try to fish out any visible pieces with a wire.
3)Pour in gasoline to disolve the pieces then pour it out followed by some type of parts cleaner.
4)Leave it....its just a few peanuts right, what damage could they do?
Also, the differential is new (from the 2002 model year) but looking through the various holes the gears don't look that clean (years of sitting in a garage without any dust cover perhaps). Any recommendations on preparing the rearend for use? Should I just plan on swapping the fluid after 100 miles or so? Any other thoughts?
Thanks for the help!
1)Try to vacuum them out with a shop vac...not sure if I would have too much luck with that.
2)Try to fish out any visible pieces with a wire.
3)Pour in gasoline to disolve the pieces then pour it out followed by some type of parts cleaner.
4)Leave it....its just a few peanuts right, what damage could they do?
Also, the differential is new (from the 2002 model year) but looking through the various holes the gears don't look that clean (years of sitting in a garage without any dust cover perhaps). Any recommendations on preparing the rearend for use? Should I just plan on swapping the fluid after 100 miles or so? Any other thoughts?
Thanks for the help!
Team Owner
Joined: Mar 1999
Posts: 22,025
Likes: 192
From: At the beach in little Rhody
You need to get the peanuts out. From your description, it sounds like the unit was left open and is full of dirt. If that is the case, I would think disassembly is in order. Short of doing that, I would pick up some cheap differential oil that meets the requirements and fill the thing to the top and see if you can flush it out that way since you can pour the oil out the front where it mates to the tranny. But if its in the clutches, etc. I'm not sure how you would use this without someone going through it.
