2001 Ford Explorer Sport with 8.8 Inch Ring Gear Rear Differential Cover Dorman OE Solutions 697-702

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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the rear differential cover on this 2005 Ford F150 with the 8.8 inch ring gear, and it's the same part and similar process on these F150s from 2004 to 2013 and the items that you'll need for this is new rear differential cover from 1AAuto.com, 13mm socket and ratchet, a drip pan, razor, RTV, torque wrench, four quarts of 75w-140 gear oil, and a hammer.

You come under here. There are two tags on the rear differential. This tag says, "75w-140, synthetic oil only." That's telling you what weight to use. I'm not sure exactly what that tag is. It probably tells you about the rear end, but these are 13mm bolts. Leave two bolts at the top of the cover and then, using a flat blade screwdriver, you want to just pry open the bottom of the cover and it helps if you just hit it up into place with a hammer and you'll start to see the fluid trickle out. You want to make sure you have a drip pan underneath and just keep hammering until, when you pull back on the screwdriver, it drains.

When it's done draining, remove those last two bolts and then pull your cover off. Now, put some paper towels in over the gears and those will just protect them while you do the next step. Using a razor, just scrape off all the old gasket around where your cover was. When you finished, you can remove those paper towels. At the bottom of your differential, there's a little reservoir that collects sediment. Just try to get as much of that out of there as you can and then wipe down the outside of the differential.

Now, we're going to paint our new rear differential cover. It shows up silver. We want it to look black so it matches the vehicle more. We're just going to wipe it down with some mineral spirits. You don't have to do this. You can just leave it silver, but if you did want to paint it, just spray it with some primer. When the primer is for the most part dry, still a little tacky, you can spray on your spray paint doing nice even coats.

Now, even if you don't paint your rear differential cover, this next step you need to do. Just take some RTV and trace around the outside and put the gasket into place and then trace with some RTV around the outside of the bolt holes all the way around the cover.

Again, make sure the outside of the differential is clean and then push the cover back into place and start replacing those bolts. You do want to make sure that the outside was clean before you put this into place, because any oil will ruin the seal. We'll fast forward as Mike replaces those bolts and tightens them up preliminarily. Torque each of these to 20 foot-pounds in a crossing pattern.

Back here is your fill cap. Using a 3/8th ratchet, just open up that fill cap and pull it out. It is magnetic so it will have some sediment on it. You just want to clean that off. Then, using your 75w-140 gear oil, just squirt it in.

Here, we're going to add some limited slip differential additive. We'll just squirt some directly in and then we're going to take an empty bottle of gear oil and just squirt it into the empty bottle and then fill the bottle to the halfway mark with some regular gear oil. Then we're just going to squirt that mixture into our differential and then top it off with some more gear oil. If it starts to trickle out because the oil has reached the bottom of that fill hole, then you're all set and then you can just put that cap back in and tighten it up. Then just wipe down the area and you're all set.

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