When I had The Precious down with Joe, he mentioned that the whole left side of the trans and diff were covered in oil.
I countered that it was from the spray from the broken fuel exit elbow.
He said it was definitely differential fluid and asked when I'd last checked the level.
"Not that long ago..." is what I said.
While I'm certain I'd checked it when I put the trans back in, I forgot to record it.
The last record is from two years and 30k miles ago.
Being a paranoid worrier, I managed to work up a panic attack last night thinking about it.
JOY!
This morning I put the car up in the air and checked it.
It's still full.
I also gave the oily coating a good looking at.
There's no tell-tale smell of sulfur in the oily stuff clinging to the case. It also doesn't really smell like gas residue.
The CV boot on that side is intact and not leaking.
There's no fresh petroleum product anywhere, just saturated dust sticking to the side of the case.
Smell wise, it's most similar to transmission fluid and there's a vent on top of the transmission and it's possible I overfilled it two years ago and it's puked out the vent a couple times, but not recently.
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Whole L/S covered in oil.That statement would suggest active leak.Your observation is more of a film with road dust already drying the film.When ever I encountered this situation I cleaned the area and reported to the owner we need to inspect next LOF. I hope you cleaned it so you can monitor it. When you pulled the axle/ subframe assembly you didn't remove the axles? Might of had some residuals from that. Side note what auto trans is in Precious?
ReplyDeleteIt was covered in some sort of dust saturated with a petroleum product when we dropped the trans/rear cradle. We did not pull the axles, we dropped the cradle/rear/trans/torque tube as a unit.
DeleteI am not sure how to describe it, but nothing looked fresh. When I lived off the paved roads the active leak was a wet spot in the dirt/dust. I don't have a wet spot and I don't have any low fluid levels.
We didn't do much cleaning because it was near 100˚/100% in the garage and we were concerned that any cleaning solvent we used would get into the now unplugged electrical connections and make our problems worse.
This is why we're thinking it's puking from the vent and it happened to go down the left side of the case or that it's from the fuel vapor spraying out the top of the broken pump exit.
I've got a TR6060 six-speed manual under there.
You saw the pics of the clutch swap! How could you forget? :)
DeleteDoooh, Put a clutch in it. It's Jack and Coke time. Well at this point I'm sure you would just clean it and monitor. A drip is a leak and seepage is seepage. You know all your fluids are full so no risk of mechanical failure. I've been retired 3 years so a lot of this fades fast but I can still see in my minds eye the undercarriage of Precious (no perversion, girl!). Gasoline can leave a film that will attract road dust, any chance that brake line disconnect got some of the fluid in that area? I know it's more outboard of the sub frame. I see you have an Equinox,don't want to get started on them. Anyway,Thanks for letting me comment. Keeps me in the loop,Al
ReplyDeleteJoe informed me of the coating. I already knew about it because it was there when we dropped the cradle.
DeleteJT half thinks that the aluminum is porous and we're seeing road grime and clutch dust sticking to what's weeping out oh so slowly. He's got a couple of Suburbans with weeps that never seem to actually lose fluid level.