Not exactly diesel related, but here goes.My brother came over to my house today,he has a 2002 Dodge 2500 V-10, we noticed that the underside of his truck was covered in oil. Found the drain plug for the transfer case laying on the skid plate!! no oil left in the case! must have happened on the way over(he lives 35 miles away)to my place. Anyway to make a long story short, this is not the first time this has happened. He was in Tucson cruising on I-10 and lost the plug...same thing sitting on the skid plate. The case was toast metal shavings everywhere. So he called dodge and they came and picked it up on the side of the road, it was covered under warranty. I'm just wondering why would that plug back out twice?? Guess the first time they replaced the case, but this makes me think otherwise. So we go to the *********** today and the guy comes off like we won't cover that...someone must have tampered with it. So I start in with I'd like to talk with the Zone Manager about it then...and why the #$%& would someone tamper with it? anyway he gives my bro a number to call monday morning and blah..blah..blah. So we got some oil and locktite and put her back together and he drove it back home. The truck only has like 40k miles on it so he said if he has any more problems with it it's going back in for service.

 

If my memory serves me right the drain plugs on the 2002 are a allen wrench to remove. The plug is a pipe plug. To tell you the truth I never seen it before. I've got 57K+ on mine and never lost the plug or had it loose.

 

If the 02' is a pipe plug with the allen head plug that is larger then the thread itself, you might be bottoming the head before the thread interference locks the plug...assuming it is pipe thread. In the event that it is pipe thread lose the stock plug and use a regular pipe plug as the case could have got tapped a touch too big and the reg pipe plug will just thread in a bit farther till it gets tight instead of bottoming out. If they are not pipe thread just dissregard everything I said as jibberish.

 

I'm pretty sure your right high country.

It is a pipe thread as far as I know... That idea would work good.

I've only chaned the transfer once so it kinda hard to remember what the drain plug is like...

 

that lil drain plug has a lil rubber washer/seal or whatever on it at least mine does...maybe that was lost a while back and it never quite tightened in there ...and so when the transfer case gets hot during driving it forced the plug out...it may also have been overfilled ...causeing more pressure on an already loose plug