Dropped a rubber hose in rear diff, am i screwed?

Today for easter sunday being I had nothing to do I decided to change all the drivetrain fluids, starting with the rear diff using a hand pump and amsoil severe gear oil, I managed to pump 2 quarts inside my rear diff, after finishing the second quart and taking the pump off to start the next, the rubber hose on the pump somehow fell off into the rear diff. I spent a few hours trying to fish it out the fill plug, ended up draining it to see if it could come out but to my luck nothing ever did.

So now I come to yall too see if you have any suggestions, should I run it and let it get chopped up and never have to worry about it, should I keep trying to fish it out(seems like finding a hay in a needle stack), or should I get someone to take it apart?

Really lost and need some help here, its my daily driver and now i cant drive it at the moment, all help is appreciated thank you.

It is a rubber hose, about 5 inches long and 3/8 diameter.

Truck is a 04/ 4x4 w/ elocker .

 

Probably gonna have to take the third member out, I dunnno how to do that

 

If it's your daily and you can't afford to replace the diff on the off chance it causes a problem then I would make sure it gets removed even if it's unlikely to actually be an issue.

There's not much room in the diff it's entirely possible it's hung up on something inside there.

As for how to remove the diff it's really easy there's about 14 nuts on the face you pull those, pull the 4 bolts holding the rear drum backing plates in out and pull the rear axles out about 2" and then the diff pulls straight out.

You will need a new diff seal and the special gear oil tolerant red FIPG that takes 24hrs to cure and burns your nose hair.

Something to try, get a TIG welding rod sharpen one end to a needle point and give it a bit of a fish hook and try to spear the rubber hose instead of just trying to finagle it out, once you can see it in the hole grab it with pliers to pull it out.

Also it may have reached the bottom of the diff you might try pulling the drain plug and or lifting the rear tires and turning them to get the ring gear to move and help the hose work its way to the bottom.

Lastly having a locker you might try pulling the locker motor actuator but given the hose is on the opposite side and face it probably wouldn't help much.

 

It's not that hard to pull the third member. You will need to remove the wheel, brakes, and brake drum so you can pull the axles. Then unbolt the driveshaft and remove it. Undo the bolts around the third member, and it will pull straight out. I recommend leaving a few bolts in but loose as you free it up from the silicone it is sealed with. They included prying points in the casting so it's actually pretty easy to pop off. Scrape away the existing silicone and spread a layer of silicone gasket maker on there and close it back up.

If you rotate your tires and do your rear brakes at the same time the amount of additional work is surprisingly little.

EDIT: I've only done this to install air lockers, so if you have electric lockers you'll want to pull the motor first.

 

EDIT. Disregard this . Learned something tonight lol. TW is great

Its all hardened steel inside. Just wondering what can a small price of rubber do ? Like it will cause the gears to seize up right? It should be grinded to a pulp after a few hundred miles then change the fluid again. Of course I may be wrong

 

Gear to gear tolerances are extremely fine, and yes the gears are hard hardened but this makes them brittle. Try and shove a hose especially one that may be reinforced with a fiber mesh like a radiator or transmission cooler hose in a space only a thousandths thick and something could break as it may put too much load in a direction the teeth weren't designed to take load in. Likely? Probably not, the hose would probably get shredded and smooshed and pushed out in the spaces if it even got into the meshing to begin with but in this instance probably not worth the risk.

 

You'll kill the bearings. The gears have plenty of torque to suck in a chunk of rubber but the bearings can't handle the hundreds of tons it would take to squish it into zero thickness. The result is the bearings move at least a little and indent the races, and then you have bearings that will fail rapidly due to poor tolerances. Not to mention that once rubber bits get in the bearings they can bind just enough on the unloaded side of the bearing that the balls slide instead of roll, accelerating wear.

I would not drive this truck as is. Especially since rubber chunks won't sink like metal chunks.

 

Can you get a camera in there to see if you can see it. I like the spear ideas if you can get it close to the hole. A very small vacuum?

 

Some angled forceps might give you the reach needed to get around in there and grab the hose.

 

Maybe one of these?

$10 DR.PEN Flexible Grabber Claw Pick Up Reacher Tool (Drain Clog Remove Tool), With 4 Claws Bendable Hose Pickup Reaching Assist Tool for Litter Pick, Home and Kitchen Sink, Drains, Toilet (35.4")

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y75N3D...d_r=dacd217a-f970-4085-869f-556ae25ddb7b&th=1

 

OP any updates? Very curious if you’ve been able to fish it out and how you did it

 

sorry realized this was posted in the wrong sub, meant to be in 1stgen general,

UPDATE: so luckily my dad had the great idea of shooting compressed air inside and using a mirror under the drain plug to see it and after spraying and praying, we could finally see the tube through the hole, using a wire with a hook at the end were able to move it around till the tip of the hose was facing the hole and there was a good angle to get a small vice grip to yank it out(this took a lot of tries since the tube was so oily it would slip out of the needle nose pliers, after a bunch of tries, finally got it out, filled it back with oil now im good to go, but what a pain in the ass i hope this never happens to anyone else.

 

Right on

 

I'd rather spend 5 hours doing what you did vs removing the gears. Sounds like your luck is similar to mine.

 

No substitute for dad experience

 

Love a happy ending!

I've gotten stuck things out of tight places with compressed air as well, I should have thought of that too.

Glad you're rolling again with no threat of your diff exploding, I know all too well how frustrating it can be when you're trying to do maintenance and something goes pear-shaped.

 

that’s some out of the box thinking! Glad it worked out for you OP

 

Try to fish it out through the drain plug. You can even buy a scope at harbor freight and stick it in there to see where it is first.