Monday, May 10, 2010

Jeep NSG370 Transmission Drain/Fill Plug Removal Tool

I was working on the jeep this past weekend getting it ready for a serious off-road adventure at Oak Ridge Estates near Lovingston, VA. I changed the oil in the engine and greased the Universal joint on the differential end of the front drive shaft. What a pain those little needle bearings were... I also wanted to check the transmission and transfer case fluid levels. I got under the jeep and discovered that the fill plug took a 14 MM hex headed allen wrench to remove it. Also, the drain plug was even larger at 17 MM. I did not have anything that large so I thought that I would stop by the autoparts store today and pick one up. No luck. A tried 4 different stores and Home Depot but the largest size that I could find was 10 MM. I was in my last store, a NAPA auto store in lovely "Downtown Montpelier" when I spied a display of nuts and bolts. I asked the lady behind the counter if any of them were 14 or 17 MM in diameter. Well what do ya know, the 3/8 bolt had a 14 MM head on it and a 7/16 nut was 17 MM in diameter. Then I got to thinking... If I welded the nut to the bolt I would have a two ended tool to remove both the fill plug and the drain plug. I separated the two by two washers so that the smaller end would not drop into the larger drain plug opening. So I plug-welded the nut onto the end of the bolt and this is what it looks like.



Here is the nut with the center welded to the end of the 3/8 bolt.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just made one after finding this. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Perfect solution to a mundane issue. Thank you.