Front Diff Breather Disconnected

So a while back I noticed a burning oil smell after getting out of my truck one day, not strong but definitely there. This happened to be right after I got my first oil change from someone other than Toyota...should’ve done my own blah blah blah; not important for this thread. Anyway, I did some looking and found oil on the underside of the skid plate. Check the motor oil level, everything looks good; so I chalk it up to the techs spilling oil on the skid plate and leave it at that. Everything drove and sounded fine so I didn’t investigate further.

Fast forward to this past week.

I went on a 4 day wheeling trip through Colorado, hitting Medano Pass, Engineer Pass, ending with Imogene Pass.

After my first water crossing at Medano I almost immediately smelled a slight burning oil smell followed by a high pitched whine (similar to when you brake pads wear out) but only in 4lo. I did a walk around, checked the oil, everything looked fine. Kept driving, all was good save for the very intermittent whine. The burning smell faded.

Trip continued as planned, hit Engineer Pass next, followed by Imogene; all while running the passes almost exclusively in 4lo in 2nd or 3rd. My only other witnessing of the symptoms was on the climb up Imogene where I heard the whine maybe 2-3 times total and only for a short period.

In total I had probably 12-15 water crossings between all 3 trails, and covered over 2500 miles over the whole trip. The truck performed extremely well and showed no signs of trouble.

On the way home I caught the burning smell once again and finally found evidence at the back of the skid plate of an oil leak.



I got home without issue and started thoroughly looking and finally found the culprit.



My front diff breather hose had become disconnected at the lower coupling and had slowly been puking diff oil out. I drained the diff and found a geeenish/milky white oil in great quantity (I definitely had not lost a significant amount of oil). I managed to squeeze my left hand and a super long flat head up in there and re-seated the coupling over the breather.



I then drained and flushed the diff with a full quart of new oil. The old oil that came out, 80W-140 from Nitro, has a green appearance. Based on the milky white color I either had water emulsified from the numerous crossings or perhaps packing grease from when I upgraded to 5.29s? Either way I flushed it til it ran clear and refilled it. Got everything closed up and took it for a test drive, I could not recreate the whine and the truck showed no signs of anything amiss. I ran 4hi, 4lo, the locker, and gear locked it in 2nd and 3rd and everything worked and sounded solid.

I also checked the breather extensions in the engine bay thinking that maybe the valve got stuck and the oil found a path of least resistance and caused the coupling to separate. They looked good to go.



If y’all have any ideas as to what caused the coupling to slide off the breather hose please let me know, but apparently it had been that way a while.

I’ll be monitoring it closely for a while but it looks as though I found and solved my problem.

 

Who did your front gears? I would bet that’s when it got left off

 

A local shop did. That would make sense but it was almost a year between my gear install and the first sign of a leak. Not sure if that was it or not.

 

That should have said could be they just screwed it in finger tight and forgot to tighten it down and vibrated out after a year.

Damn genxers know just enough about technology to be stupid

 

I have 2nd gen. I just installed new gears and lockers and the front diff breather is disconnected from the diff -- by my own doing. I can't for the life of me figure out how to get my hands or anything in there to re-seat. Does anyone know if the location for the 3rd is the same as the 2nd and if so -- or even if not, do you have any more tips beyond left hand and screwdriver? For example, did you have to loosen the diff bolts and create more room? Or were you able to just reach up there? THANKS

 

In the photo where you show the tops of the breather lines, where exactly is that? I had to change out my front diff/carrier and can't figure out where those 2 tubes snake their way up. I also couldn't attach the clamp to the top of diff that holds them in place. I though I could do that after the diff was in place but it's not looking that way, I may have to drop the diff/carrier back down, attach the tube clamp and push the whole thing back up into place. Any advice is appreciated.

 

I’m currently dealing with this issue. And I have a 2017 Tacoma. Can this issue be solved without needing to lower the differential. For instance, would I be able to loosen the bracket to the diff and resleeve the fitting? also, other folks were saying that I needed to put a hose clamp on this, which seems IMPOSSIBLE…

 

Here’s my current thread for additional info
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/front-differential-cv-axle-seal.818750/#post-29363725

 

Contrary to what that other dude said in your thread I don’t believe that hose has a clamp on it. If it did it wouldn’t have come off and even if it did pop off you’d see clamp marks on the hose or the clamp would still be on the hose.

You certainly can add a clamp but you if just want to try and get some long nose pliers or a up in there to just get it reseated then just do that.

 

They make a “snake” hose clamp tool for these hard to reach areas. I’m not saying you need a hose clamp or don’t but it would be insurance it not coming off again if you could manage to get one up there. Idk how you’d get your hand up there bc i haven’t had a chance to look but those tools are very handy for jobs such as these. I bought one off Amazon for like $30 and it’s nice
Also your seal seemed to have been seated good to me as I did mine this summer after replacing cv and having a leak. I had to do it twice myself

 

Yeah I tried fitting a clamp on but to no avail.
I’m considering loosening the bracket to the hose and seeing if that gives me the play to be able to reconnect and then tighten it down

 

Here’s the bracket

 

Looking at dropping the front differential by about an inch to see if i can get the clearance to squeeze my hand in there. Any suggestions or an alternative?