Well I can't even begin to tell you what a horrible night I just finished. I am publishing this, not as an admittance of stupidity, rather in the hopes that I can help someone else from ever going through this.

Let me prefer this by saying that I have the Mag-Hytec cover on my rear axle. The fill hole may be a larger size than what comes on the stock cover.

So there I am, under the truck. I've got it raised up on some stands, and the axle is already drained. I've got my 8 single quart containers of Mobil 1 lined up in front of me like little soldiers, waiting to go forth and do their duty.

When I bought my Mag-Hytec from Geno's I also purchased a handy looking tool, the name escapes me, that fits inside the oil container, has an extended neck with a 4+ inch piece of rubber hose. The idea is to put the end of the rubber hose into the hole you are filling, and by squeezing the bottle, the fluid is pushed up the filler neck and out through the hose.

The amount of space between the differential cover and the spare tire is very slim, but with this nifty tool, you can easily get to the hole, fill it and not make a mess or lose oil.

So there I was, trucking along, squeezing oil like there's no tommorrow. On the 6th quart of oil, I give it a squeeze and the 4+ inch piece of rubber blows off the tip of the filler neck coming out of the oil quart. Dang it, so much for a perfect fill. As I begin looking around the garage floor for the rubber tube, I begin to wonder "Where could it have gone?"

The thought begin to creep into my mind, that there is a slight chance that the rubber hose, could have fallen inside the differential!

Now I am worrying! Surely it couldn't have done that, I didn't have but the smallest portion of the tip of that in the filler hole. As I begin feeling all around and not finding it, I decide that I need to remove the spare and get a better view of the above. So I take the spare out, and now have easy access to the entire rear of the truck. Still no luck.

Time to enlist the help of the wife to begin searching the perimeter of the truck. While she is doing that, I am going through the kitchen to find a large enough piece of tupperware to hold the 6 quarts of new oil that I have just put into the axle. The wife was having no luck, so I begin to drain the axle, AGAIN!

With the axle drained, and shining a light from above and below the axle, I look into the fill and drain holes to see if it is there. No sign of it! Hmmmm.... I still can't find it outside of the differential, I can't see it in the differential, but that still doesn't mean that it isn't in there.

OK, time to remove the cover.....

Of course, there it is, laying inside the differential! Well, I can now re-assemble the differential, add the oil that I hadn't added yet, pour the oil from the tupperware, back into the quarts, and then pour the quarts directly into the cover. Pouring the oil into the cover with the spare removed is a piece of cake. There is no need for a special little tool. It takes a matter of seconds to remove that spare and gain easy access to your cover.

So take it from me fellas, remove your spare and save yourself the possible headache. And if you are using that little tool from Geno's be warned, it EASILY fits down that hole and will slip right in there if you aren't careful.

 

Glad you got it sorted out. I've been using a little "thumb pump" that I bought at pep boys years ago. Just open the plastic bottle and drop one hose in the bottle and the other hose in the fill hole. Lots easier than removing the heavy spare.

On the other hand, in 18 months I've never had the spare off - may have to do it for practice to ensure the mechanicals/etc work.

 

Thanks forr the heads up. Cover & oil to arrive tomorrow & down with the spare. Did you find any engraved numbers on the face where the cover fits? Have heard that there are stamped numbers that must be filled for the o-ring to seat correctly..

 

Not so much numbers, rather a slight difference in the configuration of our bolt pattern compared to the GM pattern. The Mag-Hytec for our truck is the same as the GM 14 axle. The difference is that we have one extra bolt in the pattern. You will need to silicone around that lower bolt to get a good and proper fit and prevent any leakage.

You will find several articles on this site regarding this in relation to the Mag-Hytec.

 

Ahh, sounds like one of my changes. Last one, I kicked three 1 gallon bottles of old oil (caps off of course) which were lined up and they all fell over like dominos. I was under the truck at the time. The beauty of a 4x4 is you don't need to use a "Jay's E-Z Funnel". The bottles fit above the filler hole.

"Captn. Lucky"

 

As noted in another thread, you might take a look at the vertical travel of your spare tire when your suspension compresses. Someone suggested lowering the spare a few inches then using a motorcycyle type tie down strap to cinch the tire to the rear, then crank it back up. I did that and now the spare will clear the Mag-Hytec which obviously sticks back further from the casing than the original cover. Having your spare tire hitting your differential cover is NOT something nice.

 

My spare has plenty of clearance.

 

Viper
I always place 2 zip ties on a hose to keep it from falling in.
Place them 180 deg off and clip them to 2 in and that will cover it.
Ever pull a transfer case apart to get the hose out??
Jon

 

The Dodge axle housing is actually different than the one on the GM. The bolt pattern is the same however. There are two different covers, the O ring is cut out different for each. If you have the correct cover you do not need to use any silicone.

 

Mag-Hytec is shipping the same cover for the GM-14 as they are the AA-11.5.

 

You may want to read this thread and possible contact Mag about getting a replacement cover if yours does not have the revised O ring routing.

http://www.turbodieselregistry.com/f...c&pagenumber=1

 

Mine has the old o-ring pattern, but it also doesn't leak.

 

Glad it's not leaking, but if you purchased it for a Dodge Mag should be willing to replace it at no charge as they sold them for about a year with the wrong O ring pattern and many people who had them had leaking.