I missed that sorry capt .

 

I've never done GREAT in the shipping lanes, but got a few.

I usually hit the Detroit River...Trenton channel or east side of Grosse Isle.

 

Sorry it took me two months to reply guys. Law school got really crazy hectic and I never even had time to inspect that hose you told me to check out until I got out for break. I didn't disconnect the hose from the back of the axle, but I followed it to where it ends and checked it out. I pulled the plastic cap off and inspected more, and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. No gold coins or hidden treasures or anything (video games have disillusioned me).

I checked my level and I was low. How much is hard to tell because I couldn't find my pump, so I had to use the "bottle squeeze" method. I used about half of a bottle that had already been used and those bottles have 32 ounces in them, so probably less than 16 ounces low.

The one thing I saw of interest though was that there was diff. oil sprayed in a circular pattern all over the underbody surrounding the front of the rear diff. I'm guessing that maybe I had overfilled it and it leaked over the seal, and the motion of the driveshaft spun the oil in a circle. My back hatch is covered in oil from the rear diff, from that oil hitting the tires and coming up to the back hatch. So, it's either from being overfilled or from me screwing up the install of the new seal. Again, I forgot to use RTV. Also, another thing which points to human error on the reinstall is that even though I was low when I refilled it, i was still leaking and spraying rear diff oil, because I had new oil stains on the back hatch when I parked it. This goes in the face of the "overfill" idea because obviously if I was low yesterday then I shouldn't have been leaking yesterday if my seal was good.

It would be so much easier if instead of worrying about how many threads I tighten to and how much, they just had a ft. lb. torque measurement. Although I suppose that too would be difficult because it would be hard to get to such a high torque rating while lying on your back with no room to extend your arm or leg, no room for motion of your torque wrench so you'd have to go a tiny turn at a time, and all done with a differential 2 inches from your face. Time to get a shop car lift.