I have 1995 4x4 with only 45000 miles on it and i went out this afternoon and noticed a puddle under the front end. I crawled under it and found out ther rubber hose coming from the passenger side of the axle was leaking what smells like gear oil. anyone else had this problem ? please help .

 

I never really heard of that, unless some very obvious reason like parked on a sever angle, just recently changed gear oil and over filled it. The gear oil should never get to the vent tube, it is taped from the top of the axle housing and the gear oil level is just over half way there. Did you run Thur a stream or something like that with water? That vent tube is suppose to exit the axle and run up the the inside of the right fender, where it is attached and filtered. Yours must have been modified.

 

After a fresh gear oil change in mine, and a fairly hard run to Montana and back, I noticed a little oil spit out of the vent tube. My vent tube was still attached to the inner passenger fender.

Probably due to a bit of overfill and a bit of heat.

 

Mine did the same thing for about a week in the Fall. I never found out what it was. I just changed the fluid and it was pretty dark. I have no idea what caused it though.
-cody

 

I've seen the vent tube puke oil on several rigs, always caused by overfilling the differential.
Follow the manual instructions, 3/4'' below the bottom of the fill hole while parked level. A lot of folks fill to the bottom of the hole and end up with puking or leaks out of the axle ends.

 

The vent on the end of the hose is designed to let pressure build up out and no foreign objects in.
If it were to become stopped up by say a mud dobber of some thing the housing would become pressureized after a long run.
It would puke when it built up enough pressure to unplug itself.
This can also happen when the small hole going into the housing gets clogged.
They can clog when a truck has some age but not many miles like yours.
If it happened after a long run where it usually gets short runs this is prob. the case.
Before trying anything rash make a similar runfirst and see what happens.
I would check the fluid level first.
Or just blow air back through vent it should go into housing freely.

: Eddie :