Folks:
I've posted about my noisy front differential and got good feedback about diagnosing it. One idea is to pull the drain plug and see if I have metal shavings. Well, last fluid change I could NOT get the fill plug out of the diff. I stripped it rather bad and eventually just filled it via the drain plug and a pump hose. Messy and not accurate.
Anyway, I want to remove this blasted rusted or frozen plug so I can see what my oil level is and refill after I drain and inspect the magnet. Issue is, it is really frozen. Let me tell you what I've tried and please give me some feedback on what more I should do.
1) Sprayed it with PB Blaster (or equivalent) solution and let it soak for a day.
2) Bought a reversed thread bolt remover kit. Works GREAT. It takes a solid purchase and no more slipping.
3) Put a breaker bar on there and pushed--until I broke my breaker bar at the head. Yeah, it wasn't a Snpap-on (Harbor Freight crap). So it's gone.
4) Remove the vent tube and put it out of the way.
5) Took to some heat and pneumatic impact wrench I used to remove lug nuts. Heated the outside of the area around the bolt--tried to avoid the bolt--to what I measured as about only 200 degrees. I have a laser temp device so I'm sure I was about that hot.
6) Put on the impact wrench on again and had run for at least 15 seconds.....NOTHING.
To my question: Do I heat only the surrounding area and NOT the bolt its self? I's a very large bolt with a wide area of threads. I assume I need the heat the case to expand the diff threads so they enlarge while the fill plug threads stay cold and thus smaller. If so, that's rather hard......flames are not exactly easy to control.
Also, how hot would you guys think I need to get this to have it finally break free? If it needs to glow read, I should probably drain it first as I think the oil inside is dissipating the heat away from the case.
Like I said, I can apply whatever force I need as the reverse thread bolt is digging in deep.
Thoughts?
TKH
I've posted about my noisy front differential and got good feedback about diagnosing it. One idea is to pull the drain plug and see if I have metal shavings. Well, last fluid change I could NOT get the fill plug out of the diff. I stripped it rather bad and eventually just filled it via the drain plug and a pump hose. Messy and not accurate.
Anyway, I want to remove this blasted rusted or frozen plug so I can see what my oil level is and refill after I drain and inspect the magnet. Issue is, it is really frozen. Let me tell you what I've tried and please give me some feedback on what more I should do.
1) Sprayed it with PB Blaster (or equivalent) solution and let it soak for a day.
2) Bought a reversed thread bolt remover kit. Works GREAT. It takes a solid purchase and no more slipping.
3) Put a breaker bar on there and pushed--until I broke my breaker bar at the head. Yeah, it wasn't a Snpap-on (Harbor Freight crap). So it's gone.
4) Remove the vent tube and put it out of the way.
5) Took to some heat and pneumatic impact wrench I used to remove lug nuts. Heated the outside of the area around the bolt--tried to avoid the bolt--to what I measured as about only 200 degrees. I have a laser temp device so I'm sure I was about that hot.
6) Put on the impact wrench on again and had run for at least 15 seconds.....NOTHING.
To my question: Do I heat only the surrounding area and NOT the bolt its self? I's a very large bolt with a wide area of threads. I assume I need the heat the case to expand the diff threads so they enlarge while the fill plug threads stay cold and thus smaller. If so, that's rather hard......flames are not exactly easy to control.
Also, how hot would you guys think I need to get this to have it finally break free? If it needs to glow read, I should probably drain it first as I think the oil inside is dissipating the heat away from the case.
Like I said, I can apply whatever force I need as the reverse thread bolt is digging in deep.
Thoughts?
TKH
