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Got a 98 Explorer Eddie Bauer AWD 5.0 V8. Rear Diff housing is leaking, Fill plug is stuck have it hit with PB Blaster twice and let soak 24 hours and won’t come loose. Don’t wanna heat so close to gas tank obvious reasons. Have heard they are sealed with lock tight and heating it will soften and cause it to come loose. Also heard using a hammer and hit it a few times will knock it loose. Can I use a impact with a 3/8 extension on it? or is this wandering into soft ground? The car is a northern vehicle so there is a large amount of rust as well. Don’t think its been removed since the factory. Also would RTV or a gasket (what part number?) be a better choice when putting the housing cover back on? if a gasket do i need to use gasket sealant on it? Any help on both issues would be much appreciated.
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Those things are really tight sometimes because they are a tapered pipe thread. The more they are tightened the more the tapers wedge together. It shouldn’t have lock-tight in the threads, but you never know. When I get a real stubborn dif. plug I rap it with a hammer on the end with you put the ratchet in. This seems to rattle the tapers loose. Clean out the square opening so the extension can engage fully. You should be able to break it loose with enough leverage. Since you are removing the cover anyway, you could always drill it out until it is thin enough to collapse inward. Silicone is fine to seal a differential cover.
Hammer seems to work best. But you could try heating the area around the plug (to expand the threads.) Try not to heat the plug itself cause that would defeat the purpose. I’m sure you would be fine using rtv on that diff but, I wouldn’t recommend it. First; if you accidentally get any rtv in the housing you run the risk of it getting into bearings. Second; from my experience it is more prone to leak. Third; your gonna hate yourself in a few years when you go to do this job again. I would just use a dry gasket. I have never had a problem with just using the gasket. Also you may want to put some “anti-seize” on that plug before you re-install it.
It’s been my experience that products like PB don’t do anything in these situations. Heat would be good, but I understand your concern of being next to the tank. You could use an impact but make absolutely sure the 3/8 drive is fully seated in that plug before you start. The ‘rattle’ action of the impact should make quick work of it. The last one I took out (for a car) I had to use a 3′ breaker bar and even then it fought me all the way.
As for gaskets, my choice would be a gasket installed dry. If you need to use something to keep the gasket in place for installation I’d use a spay-on gasket adhesive.
Thanks for everyones help and suggestions, went and got the gasket today for 5 bucks at napa, got the little booger loose, tried impact on it wouldnt break it free, heated the crap out of it and it came loose with a little finesse, had blue locktight on it. Fluid smells horrible, got dark out (dont have a garage) so just put gasket on started bolts into housing and will tighten down and fill with fluid tomorrow, got most of the fluid out but noticed when i came home a few minutes ago its still dripping on the ground from cover being on so loosely
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