How to Check Rear Differential Fluid 2002-09 Toyota 4Runner

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on our 2006 Toyota Four Runner and I want to show you how to check your rear differential fluid. It's going to be fairly easy. If you need any parts, check us out, 1aauto.com. Here we go.

Grab some safety glasses just in case anything happens. I've got a little pad down here to collect any fluid that may hit the ground. Obviously I didn't want to contaminate any of the ground or if you're working on the grass, you don't want to contaminate your soil. Bonk that 24 right on there. It's a 24 millimeter socket. I've got a nice long ratchet. Here we go.

Get that off of there. Got myself a nice clean rag. Here's our differential plug and the gasket. You want to make sure you have both. All right? If for some reason you lost your gasket, you're going to need to replace it. I like to clean them off. Take a quick look at them, make sure they look like they're in decent enough condition. That looks good. I'll clean off the threads on this plug. That also looks good. Put that on there.

Okay, so now what we need to do... I'm just going to wipe off around the edge here. I'm going to take my gloved finger. If you don't have a glove finger, you can use something else. I don't know, maybe a bent piece of hanger or whatever you've got. Stick it right in there. Kind of angle it down and you should be able to feel fluid. All right? I just went down probably about this deep into the differential as I brought my finger down. If for some reason you went down, down, down inside, you pull it back out and there's still no fluid on your finger, your differential is low. At that point you would check to see what type of fluid the manufacturer recommends and you're going to add to it. Get it up so it's just barely starting to come out, so it looks kind of like this. You got a little trickle, that looks nice. We're going to go with the assumption it's full. You're going to take your drain plug or your check plug, I guess, with the gasket on it, slide that right in here. Go like this, just going to bottom it out. I'm not going to use the full leverage of this bar, I'm just going to come right up here because I don't need that much leverage. That feels good right there. Bonk that off. That's how you check your fluid. Okay?

If for some reason you are going to be doing a service on this, right? Maybe it's due, maybe you were in the water, I don't know, you just wanted to service the differential. What you would do is you would first pull out this plug right here, like I just showed you how to do, make sure that that comes out. After that, you would remove this down here, which is also a 24 millimeter bolt or plug, I guess you would say. It should also have a gasket on it. At that point, fluid's going to come rushing right out so you want to make sure you have a collection bucket under here. Wait until it completely drains out to the point it's coming out in either a trickle or even a small drip. Put that plug back in. Snug it up. Go through your fill plug, fill it up. You're probably going to use about three pints of fluid inside this. Once you know it's full and it's starting to just barely trickle out the top, put this plug in, snug it up. That's it. Easy peasy.

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