Easiest way to open your front diff?

I need to…fish something out of my front diff. I have a couple of tools showing up overnight from Amazon, and I don’t exactly have high hopes for retrieving the lost item.

Is there an easiest invasive way to open the diff? “Easiest” is relative, I know. How about without dropping the diff? I’m fairly handy (rare colossal mistakes notwithstanding), but I have never been inside a diff.

 

Depends which side your going fishing. Driver or passenger?

 

Fell into the fill hole which is on the driver’s side. The gears block any fishing from the drain hole. So I would guess the passenger side might be better?

 

I will have two of those at my house in the morning. Plus an endoscope. I’m just not confident that I’ll actually be able to get it out. We shall see. I will be thrilled to be wrong.

 

Maybe just pull the driver side CV out and get a magnetic tool to fish it out. Hole should be big enough to get whatever you dropped out.

 

Never done it. I’ll look into it! Thanks

 

Update? I'm dying to know how it ends. Lol

 

I'm dying to know how in a weeks time there have been two threads about removing something from the the innards of a Tundra. That and the obvious elephant in the thread: What did you drop in there?

 

Man the sucks…good luck!

 

Totally resolved. Huge relief. Both of those threads might have been from me . I was freaking out. Click on the link in the first sentence of the OP above.

 

Awesome. I hadn't read the other thread.
Glad you got it and glad you shared because this could DEFINITELY have been me!

I turned a 2hr job into a 4 hr job today when I lost apparently the ONLY EFFING 1/4-28 nut in my entire garage into another dimension within the frame of the truck.

Had to wait for my wife to come home so I could go buy another.

Now when I do my fluids I'll be extra careful with that tube!