Change Your front Diff fluid!

I should have mentioned that I have only used 4L or 4H very little, some in the winter to get out thru snow, under 1/4 mile over our private road to plowed county road and only a little when getting firewood to crawl out of a place I want to creep out of with a heavy load. Wonder if Toyota used a graphite oil in the diffs? My oil was close to black, mostly the black deposit on the plug. I used Amsoil's site to determine pints of all oils needed and they did me wrong as I was short a quart for the manual tranny and 3 quarts to have enough to do the rear end, so needed 6 quarts total for the front and rear. After doing what I could yesterday, finally found the pages in the Owners Manual for capacities. The local cycle shop only had the manual trans oil. I looked and looked to find info regarding the plug size for the front, finally grabbed my dual measurement ruler and determined the female Allen wrench end (hex) needed was 10mm, so was able to find a socket in town luckily. All other plugs with flats were 15/16". Hope no minor weeping later as I reused all the old crush washers, same as I have done with my engine oil drain plug. What was really nice, was all areas were free of dirt or old oil weeping. Sorry, I don't offroad like some of you young bucks, this is my main transportation except my hyper naked Yamaha.
Duane

 

Thanks, just changed my front diff mine looked exactly the same. I was worried a seal had gone bad and it mixed with some moly grease. But my cv axles are still running strong no noise. I imagine it just gets blacker than the rear from normal wear and tear. Smaller parts, hotter gear oil. Who knows.

 

Been there, done that..