Diff Fluid-Metal?
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Sep 2011
Posts: 871
Likes: 3
From: Alpha/Coopersburg NJ/PA
Diff Fluid-Metal?
I drained my diff and refilled it. I extracted some fluid from the stream into a test tube and tried to do a magnetic separation, but afterwards I had to conclude that the metal was non-ferric because it didn't separate. Then, I put it upright for about six hours and saw what shook out. There is an impossibly small amount of metal in there-perhaps 6-8 pieces which are smaller than normal-sized sand grains (about 1/5 the size of a flake of glitter) and can only be seen when they shine in the light. Otherwise, the fluid has a high opacity; even placing it in front of a light does not illuminate it-it is that dark. Is that normal, or should it have had absolutely no metal at all? I haven't gotten to take the car on the highway yet, so we'll see if this had any effect.
Last edited by Endeka; Nov 19, 2011 at 10:34 PM.
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Sep 2011
Posts: 871
Likes: 3
From: Alpha/Coopersburg NJ/PA
The car just changed hands around 58,000 miles, and it now has 82,000, so my guess is that this service might have fallen through the cracks; it wasn't with the other records this owner provided.
Resident moron
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 4,746
Likes: 20
From: Assachusetts
The opaque, sparkly non-ferrous material is probably the wear material from the limited slip clutches. As long as there isn't too much you should be fine. When I blew my rear, the entirety of the fluid was sparkly dark gray colored and had dozens or hundreds of little chunks of clutch material in it.
Dope
Dope
