Has Ford or any others for that matter started putting a drain plug on their differential housings? My current truck is older and I have to pry off the cover to drain the oil which is messy and a time consuming hassle. Seems to me that a drain plug and an appropriatly placed fill and level plug would encourage more regular attention.

The same goes for the transmission. Make the lower pan just like an engine oil pan with a low spot and a plug. Heck, lets put a small spin-on filter there as well.

Also any thoughts on the "heat sink" differential covers with the nifty fins on them? What kind of temperature drop do they cause? Do they really help or are they just cool looking?

Like I said, my truck is a '95 so don't crucify me if the manufactures have already put drains on their diffs 10 years ago 'cuz if they did I not aware of it

 

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Regarding the differential cover ... Still no drain plug. Opt for an after-market girdle.

Regarding the transmission pan ... If you have the 4R70W you can opt for the van pan ( part # F8UZ-7A194-AA ) which has a drain plug. Otherwise, after-market.
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drill-tap-plug

easy peasy



removed the cover you're drilling first though it'll be the last time you have to remove it to service the fluids though

as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't get messed with enough to want to make it any easier. how many times are you going to need to change the diff fluid of the life of the truck; honestly. let's say you wanted to change the fluids every 50k miles. let's say you keep the truck long enough to put 300k miles on it. that's only 6 times over the coarse of maybe 15 years that you'll have to dig in there. I just don't see where it would be that much of a bother, personally