YouTuber Nearly Borks Grand Cherokee Rear End with Massive Burnout
Spinning the wheels in an AWD Jeep works with a simple fuse pull but your differential may not like it very much.
When you have a high-performance Jeep like a Grand Cherokee SRT, the first thing you want to to do is take it to the drag strip for a few runs. Of course, getting a burnout out in one is hard due to it being all-wheel drive. Unless you mess with the fuse box, first.
That scenario is what led YouTuber Josh Share into wondering if he ruined the rear differential of his Grand Cherokee SRT in a previous video. Off to the garage he goes.
“In today’s video, we are going to do a bit of damage assessment, damage control, diff service… We did a burnout, and that is why we’re doing a diff service,” says Share. “I think I may have f—ed-up my differential. We shall see.”
Share is also at work, so he has to play off his vlogging as a way to handle service warranty claims in front of his boss (which his boss says is “a good idea” later in the video). Either way, he lifts his Grand Cherokee SRT into the air, then goes to drain the old fluid from the rear diff into a cup to pour into a rag to determine if any chunks of diff are hiding in the dark liquid.
“Those are just air bubbles, huh?” asks Share. “Wonder if I did that, or if the fluid was already this brown. It’s definitely a little metallicky, but there’s not chunks, so that’s cool.”
Share then fills the Grand Cherokee SRT’s diff with fresh fluids before taking off for the day with his Jeep for a shakedown to settle the question of whether he ruined his diff or not.
“What we did is we drained and refilled the rear differential fluid,” says Share. “There’s the 8-millimeter fill plug on the passenger side of the rear differential, and then there’s the 8-millimeter drain plug that’s directly on the back and bottom of the rear differential. What you have to do is remove the fill plug first so that it creates an opening in the differential so there isn’t a vacuum so the fluid drains faster. Then, you crack the drain plug, let it all drain out.”
He continues to say that the fluid that was drained likely has never been changed (based on its color). The turning tests he puts his Grand Cherokee SRT in a parking lot finds no binding or clunking from the rear diff, meaning that his burnout did not hurt his ride in the long haul. Let this be a lesson: leave the burnouts to rear-drive Jeeps.
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