Mark Hodowanec

Why must the axle lubricant be changed out every 15K miles?

On all my other vehicles I changed out the axle lube every 100K.

What Gives???

bulabula

Why? Because DC put that in their maintenance schedule. This has been a topic of discussion for almost a couple of years now.

You want an engineering answer? You'll probably have to ask a DC Marketing guy.

You don't have to change it if you don't want to. I'd certainly do it the first time, and possibly earlier than 15k. I had the typical mud on the plug(s) when I did mine, but did have lots of sparklies/glitter in the front diff fluid. I'll do mine again in the near future, and depending what I see will determine when I do it again.

blown32

My 2 cents -- With the high torque our trucks put to the diffs and the LARGE load some folks like to pull the gears live a very hard life. I bet that DC put the very short change period in to enable them to deny claims when folks don't change it every 15K. I know of very few people who ever change diff fluid (I am a maintenance nut so I do on all fluids on all my vehicles) .

Have a great day
Allen

03 ant a hemi

ha its because of the crappy rear ends on these things. I have been pulling and cleaning my diff plug every 300 km and always have them full of metal, (slivers and the so called mud), the tech I talked to and the service manager said they are desgined to last the 170000km warrenty life and then thats about it. I would change the fluid every 15000km and check the magnetic plugs every oil change just to be safe

MikeyB

The 15k service is probably due to the 75w-90 gear lube DC specs. Breaks down pretty quickly under severe towing conditions. I recommend switching over to 80w-140 synthetic.

MikeyB

Patriot_RAM

Okay, hang on here -- I had this question for the dealer and they didn't have a good answer. I don't have my manual with me, but if I recall correctly, the towing schedule requires it every 15,000 miles. The other schedule does NOT require that it be changed. This makes no sense at all to me. I would figure if you're not towing that it might be at 30k or something, but it wasn't even listed. Does anybody know the reasoning behind this?

CTDHokie

I noticed that as well, as long as you are not in the Severe Duty maintenance schedule it never mentions a diff change. Wierd

SuperGewl

Switch it over to AMSOIL and then extend the change interval to 45k miles according to AMSOIL.
AMSOIL states you can extend the oil change interval up to 3 times normal if you use their oil.

CTDHokie

I'l prob change mine after 15k and then every 30-50k after that since there is no change interval required by my maintenance schedule.

Just seems wierd that one schedule has you changing it so often and the other does not have it changed once.