Gang,

so here's teh deal. I had a bit of difficulty about 2 months back when my rear end decided to lock up on the highway at 70mph. I finally swapped out the rear end for another one and I cracked open the rear diff cover to find out what was wrong... There was a hunk of metal jammed into the ring gear which was causing the whole damn thing to lock up once it contacted the pinion gear.

The oil change shop that I've been going to had told me that "we had a little trouble getting the drain plug off so we had to put in a new one", so I was a little suspcious...

I managed to pry out the hunk of metal and lo and behold, I think I found what happened to the drain plug. The thing is pretty mangled from having been jammed into the pinion at 70mph, but you can CLEARLY see threads all the way around it and one side is rusty which says that it had to come from outside the car. FUrthremore, there isn't a single piece of metal missing anywhere inside the diff!

I would post a picture of it, but I don't know how to get the &&#@*@ing image size below 60kb...

Basically, I'm in the process of taking the guy to small claims court to get a little compensation... new rear end, new tires, labor, etc. The show owner of course denies the whole thing and says "it just isn't possible".

What I'd like to know is whether anyone out there could take a picture of their drain plug (the one mounted on the side of the diff cover NOT the one on the bottom) and send it to me?? I need specifically, one out of an 88 740 GLE, NON-TURBO... mine is a 3.31 gear, non locking.

If you could take a picture of it from the outside, then one from the inside showing the threads, etc, I would really appreciate it.

My email address is msh1@alfred.edu

I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again,

Mike

I'll let you know how the case turns out.