Lost Fill Tube in Diff

So I was filling the rear diff after a simple fluid change. Had a 6” piece of plastic hose attached to the oil bottle to help fill.
Well, the damn hose popped off and fell right inside the hole. I tried and tried fishing with a hooked piece of baling wire. No luck. Any ideas on how to get ahold of this?
Really trying to avoid disassembling the whole rear axle to get this tube out.

 

Same thing happened to me. What I did was this.

I took my shop vac and made up a hose reducer that fit over the drain hole, but not in it. This concentrated the blower end to supply some pretty forced air into the diff.
By putting the output hose of the vac against the drain hole with an on / off motion and looking into the drain hole, the tube showed itself.

I then got a bent coat hanger and a long needle nose plier to move the tube into position to grab it and proceeded to pull the tube out.

It may take a few tries and if the tube found its way into the gears, you may have to do some probing with the hanger, but if you stick with it, you will get it out.

 

Do you have one of these laying around? My go-to in these situations.
https://www.googleadservices.com/pa...H8Q0DlqFwoTCPD2isjSkYQDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI&nis=8

 

I'm surprised that worked, but I'm very impressed!

 

If you can see it, a long nosed hemostat can get into the fill port and lock onto the hose. I think I have about 10 of them in different configurations. They work for all sorts of stuff. I used them at work all the time to hold wiring to keep it from drawing back into blind holes and disappearing. [I bought all of mine but one at a garage sales for 50 cents apiece from some retiring nurse so they are very high quality surgical steel ones plus a couple of gold plated ones. May not need them often but they are true life savers sometimes.

 

I do have a set of mechanical fingers as well as very small needle nose pliers. Problem is I can’t see the tube at all. Might have to try the vacuum trick and cross my fingers!

 

Patience is a virtue.

 

Drain the new oil into a clean container to reuse and try to grab it from the bottom.

 

I would do this, and maybe pick up an affordable bore scope. If you can find it, you should be able to think of a way to fish it out.
I too have a bunch of surgical instruments that work great for situations like this.

 

Hey just wanted to update this thread. I was able to use a borescope to find the tube and fish it out with a piece of bailing wire. Took about an hour of fishing, but thankfully finally got it out. There is no way it would have been possible without the borescope!

 

Excellent!

 

Always nice when an OP comes back and closes up the thread. Congrats!

 

So true!

 

Glad to hear that u were able to get it out. Changing the fluids on the rear diff and transfer case is the simplest most straightforward thing but man is it a messy job. I tried different things and always get oil everywhere.

 

good excuse for a new tool

 

Yes! Luckily I was able to borrow a high end borescope from work, but even the cheap ones that can be bought would get the job done. That tube was stuffed under the ring gear. Not a chance I would have fished it out without the camera. The diff would have had to come apart without it for sure! Saved me tons of work!