Hey folks, I have a 2012 JKU. I've owned it for 16 months and lavished all kinds of maintenance on it, of both the preventative and overdue variety. That's a long list for another thread. Anyway, I'd already changed the front and rear axle gear oil twice on this rig, the most recent being about one year to the day and 2,822 miles ago.
Anyway, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and actually take the diff cover off, clean it out properly, and just get a general idea of the condition of the gears. I have to say I was sorely disappointed with the condition of the oil. This was Castrol 80w90 conventional gear oil, if that matters. I've taken some pictures to share with you below in the hopes of getting your input.
I've worked on a lot of vehicles, Jeeps and otherwise, inspected differentials, and even witnessed burned and exploded ones. I didn't see anything too terribly disturbing, at least nothing that would explain the color of the gear oil. There was the usual coating of fuzz on the drain plug magnet, but no metal chunks or obvious damage. The gear oil itself actually smelled as good as used gear oil can smell. That is, it smelled similarly to new gear oil. Anyway, here's some pictures. Do I need to be concerned? Outside of the color of the gear oil, I'm not sure if I should be. Note, I did spray off any foreign materials off of the gears before reassembly.
Pictures of the internals before cleaning:
Here she is after cleanup:
You can see a little heavy wear on the spider gears but overall, they look ok...ish? Here's the oil. Ugly stuff.
Anyway, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and actually take the diff cover off, clean it out properly, and just get a general idea of the condition of the gears. I have to say I was sorely disappointed with the condition of the oil. This was Castrol 80w90 conventional gear oil, if that matters. I've taken some pictures to share with you below in the hopes of getting your input.
I've worked on a lot of vehicles, Jeeps and otherwise, inspected differentials, and even witnessed burned and exploded ones. I didn't see anything too terribly disturbing, at least nothing that would explain the color of the gear oil. There was the usual coating of fuzz on the drain plug magnet, but no metal chunks or obvious damage. The gear oil itself actually smelled as good as used gear oil can smell. That is, it smelled similarly to new gear oil. Anyway, here's some pictures. Do I need to be concerned? Outside of the color of the gear oil, I'm not sure if I should be. Note, I did spray off any foreign materials off of the gears before reassembly.
Pictures of the internals before cleaning:
Here she is after cleanup:
You can see a little heavy wear on the spider gears but overall, they look ok...ish? Here's the oil. Ugly stuff.
Anyway, I was relieved to see relatively normal wear inside. Now that I got 'er cleaned out, I'm going to see how the Valvoline 80W90 high performance conventional I put in holds up. Luckily, they made it very, very easy to change the gear oil on the D44, so I don't mind going overboard on changing it.