Hey Fellas,

I will thank you in advance for any help and insight you can provide. I'm no mechanic and am really at my wits end with this. I am going to throw out as many details as I can recall:

My truck is a 2004 1500, 4.7 with 4wd. It's got 140k miles on it. Driving home last night I took an 'off-road' short-cut to avoid some road construction. I had it in 4 hi briefly. When I got back on the highway I shifted to 2 hi but right away it didn't feel right. There was front end vibration and a general sluggishness when accelerating and it was pulling to the right. I tried shifting several times between 2 and 4wd but with no change. I drove some miles further when I noticed a noxious smell. I pulled over and looked underneath and noticed fluid leaking onto the front diff and smoking off. I limped it the rest of the way home and opened the hood. Gawd! Fluid everywhere, smoke and the worst stench!

The worst of the fluid was immediately around the power steering and brake fluid reservoirs though I can't tell which it it is. It is brown and burnt. You can see in the pic that the fluid is concentrated on the underside of the hood. Oddly, it seemed to brake and steer just fine while driving.

What do you guys think? Where should I start? Here's a couple of pics. Thanks again for your help!

-Ed

 

That brown oil looks like gear oil out of your front diff. There is a vent hose for your front diff. right around your battery. I wonder if your 4wd didn't disengage and overheated on the road spilling out some oil out of the vent hose.

 

first guess----transmission, maybe a broken tranny cooler line, check the level

 

Man, that really makes sense. I believe you hit it on the head. You can see in the pic that right above the diff vent is where all that oil was sprayed onto the bottom of the hood. That's also consistent with the problems I thought I was having with it not shifting out of 4wd.

The question is now, what do I do? Should I simply drain the old and add new gear oil to the front diff? Considering I drove it some considerable distance with it running extremely hot did I do permanent damage to the differential?

 

If you have 140k on the truck and the original oil in the diffs, youre dead wrong. Drain it, clean it out and put fresh oils in the rear and front