leak rear diff

[Matt_H]

spotted a leaky rear diff on my 200tdi disco.  Not the prop shaft seal as I've alread changed that one. So clean off the diff and start having a poke around.

Looks like it was leaking in the past as where I've used a minicup brush to clean the crud away, it was filled in with bod filler, under neath that there are some blobs of weld for an attempted repair.

Not wanting to spend too much mone (if any at all) what's the best thing to do?  Is it weldable again - can I over weld where the leak is coming from or would something like chemical metal do the trick?

TIA
Matthew

[Xtremeteam]

normally the best way to fix it would be to wap the shafts n diff out,cut the pan off & weld on a new 1,although if thats not possible then all you could try is to patch it,ive personally done what you did & poked around & before i knew it the oil was pourin out onto the floor,sometimes they can be welded but for the time it takes to clean it up to patch it,for a bit longer you can repair it properly



(although i must be a lucky 1 who has access to 2 ramps which makes things easier)

[Matt_H]

sounds like that involves taking lots of things off and spending money (which I haven't got a the mo).

I was just going to dap on some blobs of weld and see if that helped but I think I'll give that a miss and try some chem metal to see if it will hold for a few more months :-)

Matthew

[Xtremeteam]

off the top of my head the pan is 38 +vat & you would have your normal gastets,diff,drive flangex2 = bout 1.50,,
that just leaves your time to do it or if its in a garage

[Matt_H]

I'm not sure my welding is good enough to weld in a new pan, plus not being able to get it up in the air I think will make it a pig of a job...  Why do you need to replace the gaskets - oh I've just realised that hacking the old one out is going to leave lots of metal particuls that you wil want to clean out of the diff.

Ok so if my bodge doesn't work I'll get her down to safari engineering and ask the boys there if they can do it.

Thanks for the advice
Matthew

[hobbit]

As a temporary repair there is a putty that comes in two components. I think it was a petro patch type product, but works on sealing against oil as well as petrol or diesel

I cleaned my rangy rear diff off because of a leak, found pin holes in the backplate, drained the oil out, then used this putty.

It held off the leaks long enough for me to get round to replacing the pan. If you can weld or have a mate that can, as has been said above not to expensive, just a case of stripping down to weld the new one on, although when done I also applied some of this putty round the inside of the new pan around where welded just to seal any small pin holes

[karloss]

I used chemical metal, been on there over a year now and no leaks at all. Just make sure you clean it up well before gooing.

[Matt_H]

cleaned up the hole <sic> lot then sued clutch and brake cleaner to get it all nice and clean.  By this stage the oil had stopped leaking (guess the diff had cooled down and created a partial vacuum as I removed and then put back in the filler plug.  Put a nice thick coat of chemical metal across the entire area and managed to get it nice and smooth.  Left to dry whilst I did other things, it's now wearing a nice coat of black hammerite, as is the rest of the axle.

We'll see how that copes and in the mean time I can look for an axle on ebay or at sodbury :-)

[Wanderer]

http://members.mud-club.com/profiles/Wanderer/gallery/Diff%20damage
Unfortunately it wouldn't have worked on mine. See pics.

Ed

[Range Rover Blues]

I'd just weld a plate over that, you havn't got too much rust whicj is often the cause of leaks.  Ours kept leaking because somebody had left 8 of the rollers from a previous exploding diff inside the casing, everytime it went on the motorway it punched a neat round hole in the axle.  I just welded them up.  Be careful, if you're not a good welder it will be porous and leak.