No pictures at the moment because my phone was made in Asia and its a piece of ****

Struggled but eventually managed to remove the fill/check plug off the transfer case, moving on to the drain plug..... Both in the Rave and in the "D1 Transfer Case Fluid Change" thread the drain plus is a typical 6 point bolt which you can just remove with a wrench. NOT SO MUCH WITH MY TRUCK! My drain plug is the same type as the fill/check plug and the support beam is just enough in the way that I cannot fit my breaker bar or any ratchet into it, consequently I cannot remove the plug. My only 2 solutions would be to either remove the support beam and risk breaking the rusted bolts or just top off the fluid and later down the road have a mechanic do the proper job.

Seems like I have some of the worst luck whenever I try performing maintenance on my vehicle.

 

Can you fit a stubby extension into it? Gives you a little more clearance. The fill hole is a square drive. Someone replaced your drain. Another possibility is to open up bolts that hold on the access plate (they usually help by leaking anyway).

 

Unfortunately I cannot. The Rave says that if you remove the cover plate bolts that they need to be replaced, also I tried and could not get the support beam bolts lose and dont want to risk stripping them.

The square plug is in at such a angle that you cannot quit get the 1/2 tool into the square hole due to the support beam being just barely in the way. Started out with the 1/2 breaker bar and then tried a standard size ratchet and neither are small enough to fit between the support beam and the T/C in order to fit into the square hole. Yeah not only did they replace the drain plug but some of the plate cover bolts were replaced with aftermarket half *** bolts. I ended up just topping off the fluid and will leave it for now. In a couple weeks Im going to DAP anyways so I will order all new cover plate bolts and 2 new be it different style plug for both the drain and fill: Plug Transfer Case Drain/Fill (Part # SH214141) - Land Rover gaskets\seals from Atlantic British
in the future this type should make doing the job much easier I think. I really cant stand when people take the cheap route with their vehicles, because the next owner has to pay dearly for it!

Thanks anyway. What a downer though, was looking forward to doing this job all week......

 

Triar, do you have any 1/2" square tool steel (used for making lathe turning tools)? you need a piece say an inch plus long and insert it into the square female plug and then get a large adjustable wrench on it or a 1/2" AF wrench/ratchet wrench and hopefully this will undo the plug. If you haven't got tool steel maybe mild steel would be OK. Maybe you have an engineering workshop nearby. The level plug is a bitch to access but there is a route through to the plug.

This is the big downside of modular assembly built in units and then stuffed into the chassis/bodywork afterwards, you can never access anything easily without major tear downs..

 

Is it so tight that jacking up the offending part a little will not create just enough room?

 

You don't have to remove the support bar. Just use a 1/2 inch universal socket joint, and an extension or two.

 

I can't quite get my head around this one, is the tx drain plug the same as this www.discovery2.co.uk / Transfer Box Oil change where you can get a short 1/2" extension into the plug with a breaker bar onto it?

www.discovery2.co.uk / Transfer Box Oil change

The naughty boy in this link has got a straight through exhaust - like mine - tut, tut

 

Yes it is the same thing. You can get a universal joint at Sears where the Craftsman sections is.


TRIARII Why waste $35 on fill plugs you don't need?

And about replacing the cover bolts. That is a load of crap. I resealed my cover plate and made my own gasket from material at Autozone, then used RTV and loctite on each bolt hole. It does not leak. The RAVE says things like that to cover their ***. Unless your bolts are stripped and broken that would be totally unnecessary.

 

I will give this tool a try when I have time. I just figured that if I replace both plugs to the type I linked then it would be much easier in the future to remove the plugs when needed. All I would need is a adjustable wrench for both plugs and it would be alot easier fitting a wrench in those locations versus a breaker bar or socket ratchet. For the record it was NOT so easy to get my 1/2 breaker bar fitted into the fill plug! The cable in the way is not adjustable on my truck and it felt almost frozen in place so attempting to move the cable around enough to fit the breaker bar in between and in the hole was a bloody pain in the rear and that alone took me 10 minutes or more!

Regarding the Rave I dont know what else to say. Ive learned the importance of the Rave through the active senior members on this site, so I assumed everything said in the Rave was gold. I did not notice a leak but I did not want to risk a leak in the future because I did not change my bolts. So I opted to leave them alone for now.

Thanks for the tips, hopefully the universal joint will fit between the support beam and T/C......... if they moved the drain plug just a tiny couple hairs to the left of the beam it would be perfectly accessible! sigh

 

The RAVE Manual is OK but not always the easiest or quickest for repairs. Due to modularization of assembly during production they would have you tearing the truck to pieces just for simple service tasks - like fitting new engine mounts on a D2 TD5. It's by seeing others experiences, ideas and 'dodges' on various forums you soon learn there are other ways to do these things that are easier than RAVE. As they say "there's more than one way to skin a cat" .................horrible thought and expression.