It was one of those days. I’m getting really close to finishing this 4×4 conversion, and the simplest thing holds me up for hours.
Some bean-counter at Ford decided to use white-metal drain plugs with a square knob. Of course the knob is 5/8″ on each side, so I can’t use a 1/2″ drive to undo it.
It’s been on there for decades, so it’s fused on for good. All I need to do is just fill up the differential with fluid, and I’m ready to start test driving. But I can’t figure out a way to get this off. I drove to the hardware store and the big box garbage store for a 5/8″ square socket, but nothing is in the hardware, tool, or plumbing depts.
I ended up using a variety of wrenches, but none are even strong enough to bust this loose. I end up using a plumbing wrench, which was the only thing that could actually get some strength into the rotation, but of course, it breaks the square knob.
Typical.
Of course the final thing hold me up.
I do have a welder, that I’m getting pretty decent at using. Maybe I can weld on one of these old ball joint nuts from the donor truck to get a socket on this.
I don’t have a picture of it, but after welding that nut on sideways three times, all it did was break off more of the white metal until the nut was full of gunk.
As much as I don’t want to do it, I need to take the diff cover off and work on this on my shop table. I already permatexed that cover…. just more work once I take this apart.
I found another nut from the same donor ball joint, and I like this one better. Flatter. I grinded off the broken bits of metal, and gave her a cross cut in the hopes the weld would flow into the grooves. Gave it a few seconds of stick weld, and it pooled really nicely in the nut.
Now my nice black paint job is f’ed. Regardless, Once that nut was fully welded in, that plug came out really easy. Phew.
Spent a little time scraping the old permatex out so I can have clean surfaces for the gasket.
Since I was done painting, I didn’t have any more of that semi-gloss black paint that I used for the majority of the rebuild. I used up four whole cans. Not enough left to finish this cover, so I had to use some back-up grey paint from the shed.
Looks decent. Just would rather have it black.
While I was waiting for the new permatex to set, I worked on some unrelated repairs to get the veg and coolant circuits back on track. The veg tank needed a new hotfox gasket and some new sealant, because it constantly dripped all the time.
I was on a roadtrip about 3000 miles from home, so I crudely filled the gaps with permatex just to keep it from leaking all the veg oil across the country.
With a scraper and lots of Purple Power, I cleaned it up before separating the fuel pickup from the tank.
I don’t have any photos of it, but I cut my own new tank gasket with some universal material (unknown what it was, if it was paper, plastic, or some kind of hybrid), and used the same permatex from the differential to seal it up. Might as well as use that stuff up now, because it never lasts.
Back to the differential, I let the gasket set up, then I torqued it down to 24 ft-lbs as per the specs (at least that’s what google said was the spec), and filled it up with 1.5 qts of Red Line 75W90 Gear Oil. I had this stuff from when I first bought this van in 2012. I did a full service on that van the first month I got it, and bought too much oil for the job. I dug this stuff out after 14 years of sitting on shelf.
Fancy new plug now. I’m keeping this nut on there. Waaaaaaaay more useful than before.
Good to go. Even though this is probably a better longterm solution for my differential, it was a wasted day on a stupid plug.
