Leaking differential Ford E450

All the fill plugs I've seen with square drives are 3/8 inch. Would need to be a mighty big plug to take a ½ inch square drive.

I have a way of getting those plugs out. In the heavy aircraft industry, we have a tool called a "screw knocker" (some people call them and "old man" for some reason) and this has a 3/8 square drive on it, a handle, and a .401 parker taper that fits in a 4x rivet gun. The rivet gun vibrates it, helping to break it loose, but mostly it holds the square drive in the plug (or phillips screw head when removing screws on an aircraft). You turn it with the handle.

If you google differential cover identification and then select images, you get all kinds of charts with pics of differential covers made for the purpose of ID'ing rear ends.

Charles

Back in the day I would clean the plug with an air chisel and then hit it with an impact gun.

Images of Dana covers

My '03 E-450 has a Dana D70-HD diff. I'll bet yours is the same and the D80 cover may not fit.

"All the fill plugs I've seen with square drives are 3/8 inch."

You beat me to it!

time2roll wrote:
Back in the day I would clean the plug with an air chisel and then hit it with an impact gun.

Images of Dana covers

Same here but I give them a shot of PB or ATF and acetone mix, let it sit a day and crank it out with a 3/8" square drive extension and if it's tight a little persuasion with an impact always does the trick.

I can look at a 3rd member and tell what it is but that comes from experience. Fords tend to use Dana axles in heavy application or corporate axles in lighter duty apps, like F250 and 350 pickup trucks. FCA uses American axle and GM uses both American Axle and corporte stuff depending on model.

Instead of buying a new stock cover, I would have bought something like a Mag-HyTec and put that on. or just replaced the stock one with a new gasket and some sealant.

I thought 3/8 as well believe me. But it's loosy-goosy. The 1/2 would fit if it weren't for the rust. I tried my dremel to clean out and it's almost good enough but not deep enough, and the hole started getting tweaked/stripped. It's also difficult because the rear sway bar and the gas tank are in the way so I have about 3" clearance which is just enough to get the dremel and/or a screwdriver into 2 of the 4 bottom corners and try to clean/square them off. The third one I just can't get to.

As far as IDing, I looked at the door code (81) and called Ford and gave them my VIN. They could not ID it. So I stuck my phone with video on above the differential and found a spot where it has "80" on it. Lots of web searching and that's what I came up with. That plus the measurements, bolt holes and counts, etc. The chassis owners manual references Dana 60, 70, or 80.

A new cover shipped is less than $50 shipped, and I can return it minus the $7 shipping if I'm wrong. I have to do that, but taking it anywhere and doing anything will cost me more than $7.

Mine looks exactly like all of those Dana 80s. They all look the same to me. https://www.randysworldwide.com/differential-identification-dana/

How many miles are on that differential?
Shoot us some PICS when you replace the cover.

Thanks for the post.

SidecarFlip wrote:

time2roll wrote:
Back in the day I would clean the plug with an air chisel and then hit it with an impact gun.

Images of Dana covers

Same here but I give them a shot of PB or ATF and acetone mix, let it sit a day and crank it out with a 3/8" square drive extension and if it's tight a little persuasion with an impact always does the trick.

I can look at a 3rd member and tell what it is but that comes from experience. Fords tend to use Dana axles in heavy application or corporate axles in lighter duty apps, like F250 and 350 pickup trucks. FCA uses American axle and GM uses both American Axle and corporte stuff depending on model.

Instead of buying a new stock cover, I would have bought something like a Mag-HyTec and put that on. or just replaced the stock one with a new gasket and some sealant.

AAM is just a spinoff of GM corporate axles from back in the day. Yes they are shared with Ram now, but they are mostly just GM style axles.

Op, get yourself some pb blaster.

There are only about 69k miles on it. The front seal slight leak is the only reason... but that's life. I will take pics for sure. I'll take the cover off either way, and if the new one is the wrong size I'll have the old one off and maybe with some room to work and pb blaster I can get that old fill plug out. If that happens I would need to find a new one, but I have not found a new fill plug.

getting the diff plug out, I just use the oxy-act torch and head up around the outside of the plug and hammer in a 1/2 inch extension into the drain plug and hit it with the impact gun. the fill plug is a regular pipe plug, get at most hardware stores.